


cause baby now we've got bad blood

by Copperstown



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, One-Sided Attraction, Revenge, Scheming, Unrequited Love, but not exactly anti-rebecca either, not exactly rebecca-friendly, one-sided robert/rebecca
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-13 22:02:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16480568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Copperstown/pseuds/Copperstown
Summary: She’s so angry. Robert had played her like a violin, and she couldn’t even get proper revenge.Rebecca won’t leave it like this. She won’t just let it go. She won’t just get on the bus and leave with her tail between her legs, like she’s the one who has something to be ashamed of.She’ll show Robert. She’ll be the one to show Robert Sugden what it’s like to be played. What it’s like to lose.orMy take on the black widow!Rebecca theory from last year.





	cause baby now we've got bad blood

**Author's Note:**

> So this is my take on the black widow theory that I saw circling around tumblr last year, which, in essence, theorized that everything Rebecca did almost since she arrived in the village, was part of a cunning plan to get revenge on Robert for his mistreatment of the White family (may the great theories of 2017 rest in peace. And be written in many forms of fiction).
> 
> This is also an attempt by me to fix the canon of 2017, because oh boy.
> 
> Title from Taylor Swift's "Bad Blood", in honor of Robert being a fan, and because it fit pretty well.

 

Rebecca has experienced heartbreak before. She’s even experienced it at the hands of Robert before. That doesn’t make it any easier for her to deal with this time. In fact, it almost makes it harder.

Looking back, as she drives home from the courts, she’s not sure what she expected. She knows him, probably better than Chrissie ever did, knows that he plays people to get what he wants, knows that he lies and cheats.

Maybe that’s what she’d expected. For him to cheat.

She wasn’t lying when she said she hadn’t expected him to be quite so spoken for, because the entire time she’s known him, he’s never been _that_ spoken for before. After all, he cheated on Chrissie with her, so she would know. And he cheated on Chrissie with Aaron, with _a man_ , so really, she wasn’t expecting him to actually stay faithful this time around. Even if he loves Aaron more than he ever loved Rebecca or Chrissie, she’d thought that he’d still be willing to cheat if it meant a good enough profit. After all, that’s what Robert does.

Or at least, that’s what he used to do.

Apparently not this time. Apparently, he’s changed too much for that.

But he hasn’t changed so much that he wouldn’t lie to _her_ and string _her_ along to get what he wants.

She’s never felt like she was on the receiving end of his tricks and lies quite this much before. When he was with Chrissie and had an affair with Rebecca, she had known from the beginning that it would never be anything more than that. He pursued her and told her, several times, that it would never be more than a fling. And he’d never used her for any plans, just for fun and sex.

It had been more to her. She’d loved him. While he’d been testing the waters to see if she’d be willing to have an affair, without revealing so much about himself that if she was unwilling, she’d run to Chrissie and tell her, Rebecca had been falling in love. The more attention he paid her, the more she fell for him, and after their affair started properly, she truly fell in love. Not just infatuation or a crush, or lust, but real _love_.

This time, Robert had used her. He’d asked her to come to Emmerdale to help him with a plan, to help him save her dad if Lachlan was dangerous and to clear an innocent man’s name.

Well, she had thought it was about her dad. Turns out it was only ever about clearing his brother.

But either way, he’d used her for his plan, as a means to an end. He’d flirted with her for it. And she’s sure about that, she’s _sure_ he’d been flirting. Not a lot, and very subtly, but it had been there, in the way he spoke to her, softly and with care, and the way he’d put a hand on her arm or her back, and when she kissed him, he accepted it.

He let it happen, is what he said. And only to keep her on his good side.

God, she feels like an idiot for ever falling for his bullshit in the first place.

She angrily wipes away her tears, but it doesn’t make much of a difference, because they just keep falling. She can see the road she’s driving on, but she has to focus to not let the tears take over her vision. She’s nearly home, thank god.

She _knows_ Robert, and yet she’d been played as if she didn’t.

And he hadn’t lied about his relationship status. He’d always been open and upfront about his love for Aaron, and every time she’d tried to pull him back to her, he’d rejected her and said he was with Aaron. The only time he didn’t was the kiss, and apparently that had been nothing to him.

It hadn’t been nothing to her.

He’d been stringing her along, but not with words. With words, he’d only ever pushed her back. It had been with his actions and his behavior, and he can fake that for his own ends as easily as he breathes. He’d done just enough to make her think they could have something, maybe even something special this time, and all the while he’d always told her that it would never happen. He’d made sure nothing could _really_ come back to him.

She made it all up in her head, and that was what he’d wanted.

Rebecca pulls out her keys and lets herself into the house. It’s quiet, obviously. Her dad and Chrissie are at court and Sam is hardly ever inside the house. She’s alone. She sinks to the floor in front of Chrissie’s desk and takes off her shoes.

It had been a stupid plan to try and break Lachlan out, she knows that. She hadn’t spent that long planning it, hadn’t spent enough time or money truly getting everything in order. She knows Robert is right. It was a stupid plan that would never have worked. Still, she’d wanted it to. If she could do this, then she could make it right with her family.

When Robert had called her and asked her to come to Emmerdale, she’d done so because she thought her dad might be in danger. And he had been, sort of, even if that hadn’t been what Robert really wanted her there for. And as things went on, she’d realized what he wanted her there for, and she’d gone along with it, to protect her dad and to have justice for an innocent man, and yes, just because Robert asked her to. She knew what she was getting herself into. She knew what the risks were.

She knew she was risking her admittedly fragile relationships with her family for this plan.

But when everything she’d risked had become reality, she still hadn’t quite been prepared for the fallout. She hadn’t been prepared for the way her dad would look at her, or the way Chrissie would speak to her.

She’d hoped to help. She’d hoped to salvage some of her relationships with them.

All she’d gotten in the end was a broken heart.

She’s not sure how long she sits there, crying, but she doesn’t move until Chrissie comes home.

She tells Chrissie everything. Well, not _everything_ , entirely, but she tells her about Robert using her and about their kiss and about her plan to break Lachlan out of prison.

Chrissie’s angry with her about some of the things she says, but she’s sympathetic about Robert playing her.

Chrissie is the one who suggests telling Aaron.

“He’s big on telling the truth, see,” she says mysteriously. “I wonder how he can handle hearing it.”

Rebecca wonders what exactly she’s referring to, but she knows that whatever it is, it’s something Chrissie is very bitter about. Something Aaron had done to her.

She doesn’t have to think a lot to get an idea, though. After all, Aaron was having an affair with Chrissie’s husband.

“Was Aaron the one who told you about the affair?” Rebecca asks.

“Yes, he was. Right in the kitchen,” Chrissie replies. She sounds angry, but not heartbroken. Clearly, she’s gotten over Robert.

Rebecca wishes she could do the same.

 

**

 

She goes to confront Aaron the next day. It turns out to be the perfect timing as well, because the Dingles are holding a birthday party for one of them, which means a good deal of Aaron’s family is there.

Aaron’s family, which is steadily becoming Robert’s family as well.

It’s almost perfect. She can put a spanner in their happy little life in front of their family.

Except, that’s not what happens.

Aaron looks angry and annoyed, but only with _her_. He’s unfazed by what Rebecca tells him. She’s not sure she believes him when he says that he already knew about the kiss, because Robert had really tried to make sure Rebecca would never tell him, and she can’t really imagine him telling Aaron himself.

But then again, she’s not sure how well she knows this version of Robert. Maybe he did tell Aaron.

And whether or not Aaron’s lying isn’t that important either, what’s important is that Rebecca’s plan failed. She _didn’t_ ruin their happy little life.

“See, you seem to think you’re this big threat to us, don’t you? But you’re not, you’re nothing,” Aaron says, and Rebecca can feel the moment the whole situation goes from being tense for Robert to being humiliating for her.

She looks like a right cow. She looks like a pathetic woman who’s just upset that the taken man she’d tried to seduce wouldn’t have her.

It’s the truth of that statement that makes it really embarrassing for her.

“Bus should be along in a minute. If I were you, I’d get on it,” Chas says, sounding smug, and Rebecca runs from the pub. She drives home, fighting tears all the way, because she refuses to cry about Robert again. She shuts herself in her room and just stands in the middle of it for a bit, taking deep breaths to stop herself from crying and to calm down.

She’s so _angry_. Robert had played her like a violin, and she couldn’t even get proper revenge. He can get away with anything, charm himself out of any tight situation, even with someone like Aaron, who knows exactly what he can be like.

No. Rebecca won’t leave it like this. She won’t just let it go. She won’t just get on the bus and leave with her tail between her legs, like _she’s_ the one who has something to be ashamed of.

She’ll show Robert. She’ll be the one to show Robert Sugden what it’s like to be played. What it’s like to lose.

 

**

 

Rebecca has never made grand plans before. She’s never set out to get revenge in elaborate ways. This will be her first time, but she’ll make sure this first time will be as good as if she were a seasoned schemer.

Planning it takes a little time, though.

She knows that first and foremost, to get revenge on Robert and make him lose, she has to ruin his relationship with Aaron. That’ll devastate him, and as a bonus, it’ll leave him isolated when he loses the rest of the Dingle clan as well. What Rebecca doesn’t know is how she can go about doing that.

She also realizes fairly quickly that she has very little chance of ruining him financially. Even if she could get access to the Home James books or accounts or anything, she wouldn’t actually know what to do with it, and there’s no way Nicola King would let her just join the business, so she can’t ruin Robert’s meetings or his relationships with clients. And besides, she doesn’t want to cause Jimmy any harm in her revenge process. It’s not Jimmy’s fault that Robert needs taking down. And even if she attempted it, she’d never survive Nicola’s wrath.

She also won’t survive Chas’ wrath, so she can’t just throw herself at Robert and take some photos to show the world, and that’s how she realizes that she needs to break Robert and Aaron from the inside.

So she start reinserting herself in Robert’s life. She plays just a little dumb and asks him to help her with business stuff in exchange for profit, so he’ll spend more time with her and less time with Aaron.

She has to refrain from gritting her teeth every time he mentions Aaron.

She gets the opportunity to really test the waters when Aaron steals from her.

She considers just turning him in to the police, because that would take Aaron away from Robert pretty effectively, but she only entertains that thought for a short second. Robert would defend Aaron all the way and hate her for turning him in, and she could kiss goodbye to a satisfying conclusion to her revenge then. So instead, she goes to confront him.

She does have to stop for a moment when Aaron reveals that his dad raped him.

She’s not heartless. She wants revenge, but she’s not heartless, and she takes a moment to consider if she can do this to a man who’s gone through that kind of thing. Ruining Robert will be nothing but fun, but ruining Aaron might be less enjoyable.

It makes her wonder if she can go through with her plan.

But even if Aaron is less deserving of punishment, Robert definitely is, and she can’t back down now, so she ploughs on, asking about who wins if he steals money instead of using his inheritance.

Eventually, Aaron has enough.

“I’d rather not be sat here being tortured by you while you’re obviously getting off on it, like your sister,” he says tersely, tear tracks on his cheeks.

That stings a little.

“I am not like my sister,” Rebecca says firmly, and she’s not. Chrissie has done some sick things, like framing poor Andy Sugden when he’d done nothing wrong. Rebecca would never do anything like that. What she’ll do to Robert won’t result in prison for anyone, and Robert, unlike Andy, will have deserved everything. And also, Chrissie never had the spine to get revenge on Robert. She torched his car, yes, but only in a fit of exhausted anger and heartbreak, and the widespread destruction it ended up causing made the whole revenge aspect of it very bleak.

Aaron gives her the money back when she asks for it, and they sit down for a beer, paid for by Aaron, and get to the chat that Rebecca really wants, even if she has to conceal the true purpose.

“You can keep your money,” she says, when he takes her teasing about paying for the broken door and window seriously, “if you tell me what Robert’s involvement was.”

“He didn’t have any,” Aaron replies, looking almost confused or insulted.

“I’d be happy to ask him myself,” Rebecca says as she sits down. Getting Robert to go to her meeting had almost been too easy, and Aaron is a big fan of honesty. Robert must have known.

Aaron looks over his shoulder. “No, please don’t do that,” he says quietly.

Rebecca pauses. Aaron looks nervous.

“He really didn’t,” she says. Interesting.

“But now you’re gonna tell him,” Aaron says with an eye roll, sounding tired, and he finally sits down.

“For what purpose?” Rebecca asks.

“I dunno. Don’t know how you think.” Aaron crosses his arms. “To get back with him.”

Rebecca almost laughs at that. If it would be that simple, she wouldn’t be in this situation in the first place. Robert would have been back with her a long time ago. No, something like that wouldn’t work because Robert does actually love Aaron a lot.

But this is very interesting information.

“You have a low opinion of your relationship if you think that would work,” she says.

“I didn’t say it’d work,” Aaron counters.

So Aaron doesn’t have a low opinion of the relationship, and he apparently does trust Robert. But he doesn’t trust her. That could be a stumbling block, but it could also be a big advantage.

If Aaron doesn’t trust her, then if she spends enough time with Robert, he might start not trusting _Robert_ either.

“I can assure you, it wouldn’t,” Rebecca says. She shrugs a little. “If I thought there was a chance, I might try it. Apparently, I don’t even get close in comparing to you.” She ignores the little stab in her heart when she says that. To make up for it, she makes a joke. “Maybe he admires your burglary skills. Although I’d argue they need some work.” Aaron lets out a single, annoyed chuckle.

“So you don’t compare to me, yet he sneaks around _with_ you,” he says.

Ah, so maybe he doesn’t trust Robert entirely.

Rebecca laughs. “Hardly sneaking. We were there on the street. And anyway, he saw, eventually, a chance to make some quick and easy money. Shall I tell you what he wanted it for?” Aaron indicates with his head for her to go on. “This deposit of yours.”

Aaron remains silent at that.

“You’re not drinking,” Rebecca says, because Aaron hasn’t touched his beer at all, and she’s already a third of the way into hers.

Aaron hesitantly picks up his bottle, frowning. “Why are you being so –”

“Wonderful and nice?”

“Well, I wouldn’t have gone that far, but… in that ballpark, yeah,” Aaron says and takes a sip of his drink.

“So maybe you’ll listen when I lecture you now,” Rebecca says. Aaron says nothing and lets her give him advice about using his dad’s money to buy his house, and it’s not all that important to her that he gets his house, but what _is_ important to her is that he doesn’t hate her.

He doesn’t trust her, and he probably never will, but as long as he’s as suspicious of her as he’s been so far, he could present a problem to her plan. If they’re something closer to being friends than they are right now, he might let his guard down just enough for her to get to Robert.

 

**

 

Aaron might trust Robert for the most part, and trust in their relationship, but he definitely doesn’t trust Rebecca, and he most definitely doesn’t like Rebecca and Robert spending a lot of time together. No matter what she does to befriend Aaron, he continues to be suspicious of her intentions.

She’s just thankful his suspicions haven’t revealed her plans yet.

It does throw a bit of a spanner in the works, though, because as long as Aaron is suspicious, it’s harder to find time with Robert. Robert does try to please and appease Aaron, so he’s less willing to just hang out with her or work with her, and that gives her less time to worm her way into their relationship and break them up from the inside.

But there is a positive spin to it as well.

As long as Aaron is suspicious, he and Robert continue to bicker and argue and fight about her. In fact, she hardly has to worm her way in at all, she realizes, because her mere presence in Robert’s life is sometimes enough to get Aaron’s hackles rising, apparently.

She doesn’t need to destroy them from the inside. She just needs to hang out with Robert and let Aaron’s suspicions do the rest of the work. It’s only a matter of time.

But while she’s waiting, she has a lot of time to think, and she’s not too pleased with everything she finds.

She still has feelings for Robert.

At first, she’d attributed it to the feelings she still had when she arrived in Emmerdale. You don’t just get over feelings like that because someone breaks your heart, she knows. That’s why it continues hurting. And for the first while, she’d thought that was all it was. Residual feelings. But as time passes, and as she watches Aaron and Robert around the village and listens to Robert talk about Aaron and all he’s willing to do for him, she keeps feeling that stabbing in her heart and stomach, and she can’t keep ignoring or denying it.

No matter how much she doesn’t want to be, she’s still in love with Robert.

It’s inconvenient.

She still wants revenge on him, but everything takes a different twist, and she can tell. Her revenge plans are tinged with something other than just wanting to ruin his beloved relationship with Aaron. She doesn’t just want to break them up to get revenge. She kind of still wants to break them up so she can be with Robert herself.

But that’s inconvenient, because her revenge won’t be as sweet if she can’t gloat about it in the end, and Robert will want nothing to do with her when he finds out about her plans.

And even if she didn’t gloat – if she kept her secret – then she wouldn’t get as much revenge out of it. Because she’d break up Robert and Aaron only to give Robert new happiness with her, and that’s not how it’s supposed to work. He’s supposed to suffer.

Even if she does want him back, she’ll just have to push that part away. At least for now.

It’s fairly easy as well, when all she has to do is lay low.

She doesn’t see much of Aaron or Robert for most of the rest of December. Robert seems to have taken Aaron’s suspicions about them into consideration, and he only ever calls or texts her for business purposes. She only ever sees him when she happens to catch him in the pub, usually having a drink with Aaron. They might exchange quick “hello’s” but that’s all. Robert doesn’t seek her out for anything, and Rebecca doesn’t seek him out either. It’s clear he’s putting Aaron first, at least for a while.

That while stops when January begins, though.

It’s Aaron’s birthday on January 5th, and Robert comes to Rebecca to plan his present.

“Why do you need my help? You’ve planned enough trips before,” Rebecca says.

“Yeah, business trips, where all I had to do was book a business class flight and a hotel room. I haven’t planned a holiday trip like this before. I want it to be special,” Robert says, voice soft the way it almost always is when he talks about Aaron.

It makes Rebecca want to roll her eyes.

She restrains herself though, and let’s Robert explain his gift idea. A trip to Las Vegas, with a show and a cool ride and all that good stuff.

The kind of thing Rebecca herself maybe wouldn’t want, but she’d love for Robert to give it to her.

She shakes her head a little to get rid of those kinds of thoughts and agrees to help Robert out. She’s travelled a lot, met a lot of different people, and she has friends she can ask and strings she can pull to get this special trip of his planned.

“Thank, Bex, I’ll owe you,” he says.

“Don’t mention it,” Rebecca says, smiling. What she really wants to say is _yes, you do_.

Having promised to help Robert means that she actually has to help him, so she gets to work as soon as he leaves. She looks a few things up online, calls a few friends, and waits for it all to fall into place.

She’s actually helping Robert treat Aaron to a romantic luxury weekend in Las Vegas.

What is wrong with her.

It’ll all be part of the plan, though. If she helps Robert with this, he’ll start approaching her more casually again, instead of only ever contacting her for work. And when he does, she can continue her plan, and Aaron will eventually be so suspicious that their relationship will fall apart without Rebecca having to do very much at all.

It works out beautifully with the gift as well, because to keep it a surprise, Robert pretends to not be very bothered about Aaron’s birthday at all, and that apparently doesn’t sit well with Aaron. So on the day of his actual birthday, Aaron turns up to confront her over what he thinks is an affair.

Oh, how beautifully he plays into her hands.

“How long’s it been going on?” he asks.

“What?” Rebecca asks, making sure to come across confused. She knows what he’s hinting at. After all, that’s what she’s been working on, him feeling like that, but she won’t give herself away.

“You and Robert,” Aaron says.

“That’s not what this is,” Rebecca says, frustrated, and takes off her coat on the way to the desk.

“Just be honest with me, I can take it,” Aaron says, and he sounds like he could. He sounds like if she did reveal an affair, that he’d take it in his stride, nothing else.

Rebecca’s silent for a moment. It is Robert’s secret surprise after all. But she needs to put Aaron at ease.

“He’s planning a surprise, and I helped him,” she says.

“What’re you on about?” Aaron asks, confused.

“I’ve got a mate, who did him a deal on a trip to Vegas, and before you ask, it’s not for me and him, it’s for you and him.” Aaron looks shocked, like he can’t believe what she’s saying. “Yeah, flying first class, limo from the airport, tickets to a show, the works. Happy now?”

Aaron just continues to look like he’s in disbelief. “Vegas?” Rebecca nods. Aaron sighs, hands falling from his hips. He looks upset now. “I just… I thought he didn’t care about my birthday.”

“That was the plan,” Rebecca says.

“And now I’ve ruined it,” Aaron says, dejected.

“Only the surprise. Still get the holiday,” Rebecca says. “And the man.”

She doesn’t like how much she hates that Aaron gets the man.

“Robert’s not exactly…” Aaron pauses, looking for words, “big on the whole romantic gesture thing. This was a huge deal for him and now… I’ve ruined it, now I know.”

“Not if he doesn’t find out,” Rebecca finds herself saying.

She’s a little soft on Aaron, she has to admit. It would work beautifully for her plan to reveal that Aaron had barged in, thinking she and Robert were having an affair, because it clearly frustrates Robert and Aaron keeps having these suspicions, and she doesn’t exactly blame him for that. It doesn’t imply that Aaron trusts him very much. Telling Robert could work in her favor.

But she doesn’t want to. She’s worked hard on this surprise for Aaron, and she’s sure there will be plenty more opportunities to drive a wedge between them later. She can let Aaron be good to Robert.

Though from the way he scoffs, it’s clear he doesn’t really believe that Robert won’t find out.

“I won’t tell him if you don’t,” she says.

Aaron looks at her, skeptical. “You’d do that for me?”

“Call it my gift,” Rebecca says with a shrug. “Since I didn’t actually buy you anything.”

Her kindness towards Aaron might make him less suspicious of her, but the way he looks at her tells her that there’s not much risk of that happening. This will work out well for her in the end.

 

**

 

When Robert tells her that he won’t be able to go with her to her overnight business meeting, Rebecca brushes him off and tells him it’s been moved.

It hasn’t really. She just doesn’t want him to know that.

He’s ruining her plan a little by not going with her. She hadn’t planned on much, maybe a little bit of flirting, because even if Aaron’s not there, she can still test the waters and see how much Robert will be willing to play into her hands on his own. He doesn’t seem willing to cheat on Aaron at all, but maybe if she continues to soften him up, he’ll be willing to get closer than what Aaron can handle. Because Rebecca can tell already that Aaron will reach a breaking point eventually. At some point, he’ll well and truly put his foot down and demand something from Robert.

Besides, staying in a hotel with Robert, even if it wouldn’t be the same room, would still get under Aaron’s skin, she’s sure.

But then Robert goes and says that he can’t go, and Rebecca lies to him that it’s been cancelled days before anyway, because she doesn’t want to make a big deal out of how annoyed it makes her.

She could, though. She could have made a scene and made Aaron even more suspicious of her by whining about it, but she won’t. She’ll let Aaron cool down, just a little bit, because that might work better in the long run. If she stays away for a bit, Aaron will let down his guard a little, and Rebecca can worm her way into Robert’s life and their relationship even more.

It’s still annoying, and what’s even more annoying is that Rebecca is _disappointed_. Not because it gets in the way of her plan, but because a part of her, one she prefers to ignore, had been looking forward to a hotel getaway with Robert. They used to do that all the time during their affair, and logically she knows that nothing would happen on this particular getaway, but that small, annoying part of her, the one that’s still in love with Robert, had hoped for _something_.

But never mind.

Instead, Rebecca begins to focus on another part of her strategy, which is both to make Aaron less suspicious of her, and to maybe make Robert a little jealous (not that she really thinks that will happen, but again, there’s that part of her that _hopes_ ): she gets a fling.

Ross is fit. He’s one of the best-looking men in the village, and he’s a lot of fun to be around.

He’s the perfect candidate. He’s just similar enough to Robert in personality that Rebecca likes it, and that Robert might feel like she’s simply trying to replace him. Ross is also easy-going enough that he won’t demand dates or commitment, he’ll be happy with an undefined fling, and he’s good with PDA, which means Aaron can watch her flirt with someone other than Robert and let his guard down, and Robert can watch her flirt with someone else and maybe react to that.

It’s really annoying how that hopeful part of her keeps coming to the surface. She hopes she can quench it soon.

Admittedly, she’s also distracted from her grand plan for revenge with Lachlan’s trial taking up a lot of her time and attention, and while she and Robert had worked together to get Lachlan arrested, they don’t spend any time talking about his trial nowadays.

Also, Rebecca isn’t sure she actually wants Lachlan to go to prison anymore.

She came back because Robert convinced her that her dad was in danger, and that it was Chrissie and Lachlan who posed that danger, but now, having spent time with them, for real, for the first time in a while, she can’t truly bring herself to want harm to any of them. She and Chrissie far from always see eye to eye, but they _are_ sisters, and Lachlan is her nephew and he’s just a kid. A messed up kid, yes, but Rebecca fears for what he might experience in prison, and she fears for how it might affect Chrissie and her dad.

Robert is still more than happy to see Lachlan go down, after what Lachlan’s actions ended up doing to Andy, and Rebecca can understand that, but still. They don’t talk about the trial.

Mostly, all they talk about is work and what their plans are after work, which in Robert’s case almost always includes Aaron, and Rebecca starts making more and more plans with Ross, so she can mention him just as much. But Rebecca tries to keep Robert occupied with work as much as she can, for two reasons. Firstly, it means he’s spending more time with _her_ business and less with either of his own. He’s co-owner of Home James Haulage and an investor in Holey Scrap, which means he’s got plenty of business to see to on his own, without also having to see to her business, so if she makes him spend a lot of time on _her_ work, it means he has less time for _his own_ work, and that can easily make life difficult for him. Secondly, the more time he spends with her, or even just her business, the more annoyed Aaron gets, and that’s always great for her plan.

Ruining Robert and Aaron’s cozy relationship is, after all, the main goal of her revenge.

Unfortunately, Robert seems to eventually grow a spine and forces her to actually do a lot of the work on her business, so he can have more time off. And were it anyone else, she’d probably be understanding enough and be fine with it, but it’s Robert, and she wants him to suffer. Watching him frazzled and stressed with having so much work to do is both great fun and great for her plan. Instead, she spends an evening that she was supposed to be spending with Ross slaving in front of her laptop to finish the work Robert had started for her, and she doesn’t know what she’s really doing half the time. It’s annoying.

It doesn’t last long, though.

Robert knows as well as Rebecca does, probably better actually, that Aaron doesn’t trust her. That he doesn’t really want Robert spending a lot of time with her. And Robert’s solution to the problem seems to be to lie to Aaron about going to a meeting with Rebecca to avoid a fight.

Oh, how that backfires on him.

Rebecca stands in the background while they fight, looking as innocent as she can.

“So this is how it’s going to be from here on in?” Robert asks, incredulous.

“What, lies and more lies? Looks like it, yeah,” Aaron answers.

“No, you flouncing around like some jealous queen,” Robert counters.

Rebecca closes her eyes. That’s a harsh thing to say, even if Robert doesn’t realize it. She knows a fair few homosexual men, and most of them don’t take too kindly to being called a queen. A guy like Aaron, all manliness and tough cookie acts, definitely won’t like it.

Aaron looks both angry and hurt that Robert would ever say that to him, but he doesn’t say that. Instead, he manages to bite out a terse, “You know what, you really need to sort out that gay hating of yours, it’s _embarrassing_.”

And well, he’s not wrong, Rebecca thinks.

“This whole _thing_ is embarrassing!” Robert hisses.

Rebecca decides to step in here and say her innocent piece. “We just had a good meeting, and we were having a drink,” she says quickly. She considers herself good at playing innocent.

“You’d do anything, wouldn’t you?” Aaron says to Robert, and everything escalates from there.

It’s awkward to watch two people fighting like this, pretty much no matter who the two people are, but under the awkwardness, Rebecca feels a sense of joy, watching Robert’s relationship start to crumble down around him.

And Rebecca didn’t even have to do that much work. It’s all down to Aaron.

 

**

 

Aaron plays into her hands more beautifully than she’d ever imagined.

He gets himself arrested and charged and faces a lengthy prison sentence.

Now, Rebecca isn’t so cruel that she doesn’t feel sorry for him, and for Liv and Chas too. He’s had a really tough life, he probably has a lot of issues, and facing prison for so many months, maybe even a year or more, must be terrifying. And yes, he did beat up Finn Barton’s boyfriend (ex-boyfriend? Honestly Rebecca doesn’t care enough to know) pretty badly, but from what she hears, he did it to protect Finn from some homophobic language. She knows Aaron isn’t a bad guy or a thug or anything like that.

But it does work wonderfully for her if he goes to jail. It means that Rebecca has a sad, lonely Robert all to herself to work with, to worm her way into his life and screw him over like he deserves.

In fact, spending time with Robert while Aaron’s in prison will probably only heighten Aaron’s suspicions and distrust towards her and her friendship with Robert. Not being there, not being able to do anything, will probably drive him crazy. It’ll be beautiful.

She wonders what that will do to them.

But first, they have to get to his sentencing, and in the weeks leading up to that, Rebecca hardly sees Robert at all, because he’s busy being there for Aaron. He ditches working with her in favor of helping Aaron at work or taking his mind off the impending sentencing, and Rebecca might find that annoying if not for the fact that’s she’s 100% sure that Aaron will be locked away for at least a couple of months, where she’ll have virtually undisturbed access to Robert. She just has to bide her time.

And so she does.

In the meantime, there’s a lot of family drama with her dad and with Chrissie that honestly takes a lot more of her focus than Robert and Aaron, and Chrissie nearly frames her for attempted murder, but at the height of the conflict their dad manages to talk her down, which is a relief. Rebecca is not suited for prison.

Aaron better be though, although it doesn’t seem very much like he is the closer his sentencing gets.

Rebecca doesn’t see him a lot. She has her own stuff to deal with, and after the blowup that led to his crime in the first place, he and the people around him would probably find it a little unfitting if not suspicious if she suddenly started hanging around him a lot. He was nice and casual with her when she ran into them doing some redecoration on the house but asking him about his mindset over going to prison is maybe a step too far, too personal, so she doesn’t. But she hears through the grapevine that he starts getting more anxious and starts breaking down more the further they get into February. He’s scared, she hears. Terrified even. And Rebecca feels for him. He may have been in trouble with the law before, but this is different, and it has him terrified.

She also hears through the grapevine that in order to give Aaron a day of happiness, and some peace of mind and stability before he gets sent down, Robert organizes a surprise wedding for the day before his sentencing.

Rebecca isn’t a part of it, of course, but it’s hard not to notice when the pub it shut down for the day for a Dingle family do. She asks around and easily gets an answer.

It kind of breaks her heart, and for the umpteenth time, she wishes that it didn’t. Robert and Aaron being engaged she’d learnt to deal with. And since starting her long con for revenge, she’s sort of been expecting that they’d never be anything more than engaged, at least not for a while. She’d sort of expected to break them up before they could get married.

And sure, they’re not legally getting married. It’s a ceremonial thing, a show of love and support for Aaron during a very trying time, but still. It’s a _wedding_. One that Robert organizes all on his own.

To show Aaron that he loves and supports him.

Rebecca isn’t sure if she wants to cry or throw up, so she does neither and just goes home.

She stays home the next day too, even though she’s desperate to hear what Aaron got. She’s practically climbing the walls, but thankfully, no one is around to witness how jittery she is. She stays home because she’s afraid of how she might act if she goes to the pub and hears the sentence. If she’ll be unable to contain a little gloating and gets unpopular with literally everyone there, or accidentally reveals her plan by being too smug. She’s afraid that she’ll want to show Robert too much support, too excited to kickstart what will probably be the _real_ killer part of her revenge plan and reveal herself or push him away.

So instead, she stays home and waits until the next day. Then she goes down to the pub to hear the result.

Robert looks ashen and exhausted, which tells her that whatever sentence Aaron got, it was worse than what they’d hoped for.

“12 months,” Charity tells her, in clipped tones, when Rebecca asks.

“I’m so sorry,” Rebecca says.

“Yeah well, we all are,” Charity says, throws a scathing look towards Finn Barton in the back of the pub, and walks away to tend to another customer.

12 months. That’s a whole year. A whole entire year for Robert and Aaron to be apart, and for Rebecca to do some very serious damage. That’s plenty of time. She’s sad for Aaron and Liv and Chas, but she’s so excited about what she can do with all this time that she wants to jump in immediately. She manages to restrain herself, though. With 12 months, she really does have plenty of time, and that means that in order for her plan to work optimally, she needs to take it slow and steady. If she jumps in, guns firing, clinging to Robert in a show of support right from the beginning, then her plan will be over far too quickly given the amount of time that she has. She needs to drag it out.

Dragging it out is actually what turns out to be the most difficult. It’s pretty simple to slide further into Robert’s life, now that he hasn’t got Aaron to worry about upsetting by being with her, or to go home to at the end of the day.

She asks him during work one day how he and Aaron and Liv are doing, and Robert tells her that he’s appealing Aaron’s sentence.

Rebecca doesn’t mind if they win the appeal. It’ll be good for Aaron and Liv if he gets to come home sooner, and it won’t ruin her plans very much. She’ll just have to speed up the process.

She also starts worming her way into Liv’s life.

Liv is part of Robert’s cozy little family, and she hasn’t been Rebecca’s biggest fan in the past, what with her thinking that she and Robert were having an affair at least once, and maybe Rebecca shouldn’t try to get close to her, but she’s another access point to Robert. Getting Liv to trust her will help, because that means Liv is less likely to go running to tell Aaron all about their meetings.

There comes a golden opportunity for this when Liv and Gabby get into some bad teenage behavior and Robert doesn’t know how to deal with it.

Liv gets excluded from school, which Rebecca hears about at the same time Robert does.

“Oh dear,” she says. It feels kind of awkward to witness this moment of family drama.

“What?” Robert asks softly.

“Well… suspended. They wanted me to sit in a classroom, until they contacted you, but… you were off visiting Aaron, so I thought, why wait?” Liv explains, and just as she finishes Robert’s phone starts ringing. “That’s probably them now. They made me give them your number because they only had Aaron’s. And I had his phone.”

Robert looks quite done with the whole situation already.

He gets angry down the phone, the way he does with unwieldy clients, and calls them out on being too soft on cyberbullying, and once he hangs up, he gets in an argument with Liv about the rights and wrongs of both fighting and cyber bullying.

“If I don’t go now, I’m gonna miss seeing Aaron,” he says.

“So go. I’ll look after her till you get back,” Rebecca offers.

Once it’s just Rebecca and Liv in the backroom, Liv starts opening up.

“I didn’t mean to make it so bad for everyone,” she says.

“You’re fifteen. It’s your job,” Rebecca tells her reassuringly. “I was the same when I was at school.”

“Yeah, ‘course you were,” Liv says, sarcasm dripping from her voice and her face. “And what’d you do? Give sugar lumps to the wrong pony?”

It’s quite a funny comeback, Rebecca will give her that. She’s heard plenty of people sniping at her for growing up rich, and this is one of the better ones.

“Tell you what: you don’t have a go at me for my upbringing, I don’t have a go at you for your age,” Rebecca offers in the most serious tone she can muster. Just because it was a good comeback doesn’t mean that she’s willing to hear where else Liv can take it. “Cause neither of us can do anything about those, alright?”

“Yeah, sorry,” Liv says, eyes downcast.

“It’s okay. Anyway, what I’m saying is, although I didn’t get suspended for beating up a boy, I did get into an awful lot of trouble because of them.” Rebecca smiles, hoping to reassure Liv a little.

“I just don’t get it,” Liv says. “Sex, relationships and all that. Look at the hassle it causes.”

“Hey, you’re not wrong there.” Rebecca bites her lip. “You get that he’s gonna be angry with you, right? Robert?”

“Yeah, I thought he already was.”

Rebecca smiles again and tilts her head. “You know what I mean,” she says. “So when he comes home, shouting the odds as he’s bound to, just… try and accept it, and look apologetic. Go all the quicker. Take it from one who knows.”

Because Rebecca does know Robert. Maybe he’s changed a lot since they had an affair behind Chrissie’s back, but she still knows him. She can see that a lot of his traits, while maybe more dim now, have remained the same. She knows that he’ll kick off about the trouble Liv has caused, and she knows from experience that the best way to get it over with is to just apologize and look like you mean it. Like the times where Rebecca nearly allowed Chrissie to find out about them, and Robert kicked off at her. She apologized and did her best to look like she meant it back then too.

She’s kind of still wearing that mask of being amenable now.

Still, she means it when she tells Liv that she thinks she’s pretty amazing, and she means it, not just for the sake of her revenge plan, when she tells her that Liv can come to her if she ever needs to talk.

And they do talk again the next day. Rebecca asks Liv how things went with her school, and Liv informs her that Robert’s decided to homeschool her, which she’s not happy about, but she won’t tell Robert that.

“I don’t wanna be difficult,” she explains. “You know, he’s been great. He really cares about me. Plus, he’s got other problems to worry about.”

“What do you mean?” Rebecca asks.

Liv is quiet for a moment, then asks, “Do you ever keep secrets?”

And _oh boy_.

“All the time,” Rebecca replies. Although Liv will probably want some proof, and she’s not about to reveal the important stuff she’s kept a secret, so instead she says, “Don’t plan to show my dad my tattoo anytime soon.”

Liv smiles at that. Then she turns serious again.

“I mean, big ones,” she says. “Stuff that… people should know, but… they’d be dead upset if they did.” Rebecca raises her eyebrows at that. “I’ve… I’ve kind of promised not to say anything. But I’m not so sure anymore.”

Rebecca takes a moment to think carefully about her answer to that.

“The thing about secrets… you need to feel comfortable keeping them. If you don’t, then maybe that’s your instinct telling you that the truth is the better option,” she says carefully.

It’s the rule she’s always lived by, unless forced otherwise. Robert has forced her to keep secrets she wasn’t comfortable with more than once, but a lot of the time when her secrets have involved him, she’s actually felt perfectly comfortable keeping them.

 

**

 

If Aaron played into Rebecca’s hands beautifully, then she doesn’t know what to say about Robert’s actions that night.

His visit to Aaron goes badly, apparently. So badly Robert thinks they’re over. And in his distraught state of mind, he gets drunk and texts Rebecca, and when she arrives at The Mill to support him and hear the story of what happened at the prison, things escalate.

Oh boy do they escalate.

Rebecca doesn’t believe that Aaron and Robert and really, truly over. She doesn’t think one bad prison visit, with a fight over drugs, will really be the end of them. Robert will fight for them when he sobers up, and so will Aaron when he sobers up, especially when he realizes what he’s done. And on top of that, Rebecca doesn’t want that to be the end of them. She’ll have nothing to do with it if it is, and then she won’t get her revenge.

So she continues the night as if Robert and Aaron are still together, and she puts up a fight when Robert comes onto her, but it’s mostly for show. It’s never been part of the plan, really, because she doesn’t know how she’ll feel afterwards, how she’ll react, given the lingering feelings that she still carries with her, but when Robert presents himself on a silver platter, well. She’s never been one to look at gift horse in the mouth. She’ll sleep with Robert and let him deal with the fallout of that, and it will be truly beautiful. It’ll be the revenge she wants.

The aftermath gives her some great material as well. She gets to be angry with him, and with good reason for once, unlike the last time he used her and broke her heart. She gets to vent some of her frustrations at him, putting all her best acting abilities to use to make her anger seem as real as possible.

“Do you have any idea how cheap I feel right now?” she asks furiously, and it’s only partially a lie. She doesn’t feel terribly cheap for sleeping with Robert the night before. After all, she used him probably more than he thinks he used her.

But she felt cheap months ago, when he used her just to get Andy off the hook and Lachlan in prison. This is the chance she gets to finally say it.

Sleeping with Ross later that day is in no way part of the plan, but again, she doesn’t look a gift horse in the mouth, and a day with Ross is both good fun and relaxing for her, and something to rub in Robert’s face.

She ignores how much it bothers her when Robert seems generally unconcerned about her and Ross.

Rebecca spends a lot of the day with Ross, and it’s fun. It’s a good stress relief.

The stress relief doesn’t continue for very long though.

She’s home alone when Chas walks into the office and slaps her. It _hurts_ , which doesn’t surprise Rebecca. She imagines that Chas has probably been in a fair few skirmishes and catfights in her day. But other than hurting, it’s also a shock, not just because Chas hit her, but because it means that _Robert told Chas_.

That was not part of the plan.

“You _sad_ , desperate little slapper!” Chas spits out, pointing an accusatory finger at Rebecca and barraging on before Rebecca can collect herself. “I bet you thought Christmas had come early when Aaron got sent down, didn’t you, cause you could _finally_ get your claws into Robert. Pretending to be his mate, then you just stab him in the back!”

“I didn’t,” Rebecca tries, panicked. Chas isn’t supposed to know, not until Rebecca reveals it and ruins Robert’s life. It’s far less satisfying when Robert does it himself like this. “I wouldn’t –”

“Oh, but you did, didn’t you?” Chas interrupts. “I warned you off Robert, but you didn’t listen, now I am telling you to stay away from Aaron, and you can _stop_ pretending to be his friend, because you are just a snake in the grass.”

“He told me they split up!” Rebecca tries desperately. She can’t be blamed for this. If she’s blamed, her revenge _won’t work_. Not to mention that it’s the truth. Robert _had_ told her he and Aaron were over, and even if she didn’t believe it entirely, she could have. A more gullible version of her, one from before her heartbreak at Lachlan’s plea hearing, would have. “He lied, and he used me.”

“He used you because you let him!” Chas says, in a tone that says she thinks Rebecca is being stupid on top of being a backstabbing bitch. “You know what? I don’t give a stuff. You have been warned.”

And with that she leaves, and Rebecca tries as hard as she can to not break down in tears.

Because Chas is right. Robert has used her before because she let him. Because she loved him and would do anything for him. And maybe she also used him last night, to get her revenge, to make him lose everything the way he made her lose everything and then broke her heart, but it had been _nice_. She didn’t believe him when he said he and Aaron had split up, and she’d let herself fall into bed with him because nothing could ruin his marriage to Aaron more than cheating on him with _her_ , of all people.

But on top of that, on top of her rationalization and revenge, she _wanted_ him.

After all this time, after all her planning and work on her schemes, she’d still wanted him. A lot.

She lets out all her frustrations about this when Robert calls her over to the Mill the next day, to ask her if she’s really going to tell people. She throws in a few lies about feeling like she’d betrayed Aaron and not wanting to humiliate herself, just to make Robert feel worse.

“Bex, I care about you, you know that, but…” Robert says, trailing off a little, and Rebecca jumps in.

“Not as much as you care about Aaron?” she asks. It’s probably the only genuine question she’s asked him in a while.

Robert looks sorry, but like he feels sorry for her, not for himself, when he says “No.”

It’s not entirely like what he’d told her after Lachlan’s plea hearing, but it hurts, and Rebecca still hates that she’s allowing it to. Chas is right. Robert can use her because she lets him, and similarly, he can hurt her because she lets him. She needs to stop that.

If she doesn’t, things are going to spiral out of her control.

Her plan wasn’t about getting Robert to love her again. It was about getting revenge for how he treated her, how he tricked her and flirted with her, and never had any intention of ever touching her. He used her and her feelings for him for his own purposes, and it broke her heart. Her plan was to get revenge for that, not to get him to change his mind.

Although maybe, it’s still what she wants. Maybe she should consider it.

Obviously, gloating about her revenge when the time for that finally comes won’t make Robert love her, but if she plays it right, maybe it won’t exactly make him hate her either. Maybe, if she plays her cards right, she will eventually get both her revenge, and her man.

Well. Not _her_ man. _Aaron’s_ man, currently. But still. Maybe she can do it.

She decides to temporarily put that conundrum on the shelf and just focus on ruining Robert’s life and stressing him out about it as much as she can.

Robert revealing that they slept together to Chas puts a bit of a spanner in the works of Rebecca’s plan. It means that Rebecca won’t get the pleasure of being the one to ruin Robert’s relationship with Chas, which he’s worked hard to build up over the past year, and it also means that Robert, at least to some extent, is willing to tell the truth himself. It won’t do if he tells Aaron himself, Rebecca knows. For one thing, she can’t control how he might spin it and how he might make her look. For another, it means that Rebecca won’t be present to see the fallout.

But Rebecca is an optimist, and it quickly becomes clear that, for whatever reason, Chas isn’t planning on telling Aaron about the one-night stand, and it seems that Robert won’t be doing it either. Everything hasn’t been derailed quite yet.

So she just goes about her days, keeps a subtle eye on Robert, Chas, and Liv, and makes sure to look uncomfortable whenever Robert catches her looking, or whenever she catches Robert looking, so that he’ll continue to think that she’s mad at him for lying to her and getting her into bed. She continues to see Ross, and honestly, she has a great time with him. He’s good fun and good to look at, and if Rebecca could, she’d make herself love him. It would be far more practical. He’d love her elaborate revenge scheme, would probably help her if he found out about it, and would laugh his head off when she eventually delivers the final punch to Robert and reveals what she’s been doing.

When Victoria invites her to Aaron and Sarah’s joint welcome home party, Rebecca doesn’t have to fake being uncomfortable. As much as she’s enjoying getting her revenge on Robert, she knows she won’t enjoy being in the same room as Aaron right after he’s released from prison, so soon after she took such a big step in her revenge plan.

She’s not exactly friends with Aaron either, or with Victoria, so it feels weird to her that Victoria is inviting her like this, and it gets even more uncomfortable when Victoria asks if she could get Sarah a signed photo of Zayn Malik.

Victoria is apparently perceptive enough to notice that Robert and Rebecca aren’t exactly friendly, because Robert confronts her later that day to tell her that he’s told Victoria he stitched her up over a business contract.

“Seriously,” Robert says. “The last thing I need right now is Aaron getting wind of something because you can’t play it cool.”

“I see,” Rebecca says coldly.

“Do you?” Robert asks. “Cause he’s all that matters to me right now.”

“Right now,” Rebecca says, trying to maintain that same cold voice.

Robert sighs and closes his eyes briefly. “Please, Rebecca, I’m – I’m asking you as a friend.”

Rebecca gives him a look, a little amused and a little insulted. “That’s an interesting word to pick.”

Their conversation is interrupted by Ross’ arrival, and Rebecca enjoys laughing at the notion that Robert gave her a better offer than Ross, before heading back into the Woolpack with Ross behind her.

 

**

 

Her wobbling over her feelings for Robert aside, Rebecca thinks everything is actually going quite well. She turns up at the welcome home party with a life-size cutout of Zayn Malik for Sarah, threatens Robert that she’ll decide for herself whether or not to tell Aaron (she won’t say anything yet. Chas is far too scary for that, and she needs more of a buildup), and she manages to make Robert really freak out by having a quiet conversation with Aaron – she doesn’t say anything to him, but Robert doesn’t know that, and when Aaron storms outside right after Rebecca’s conversation with him, Robert looks slightly panicked, and Rebecca tries to stop her smile from looking too smug as she passes him on her way to the toilets.

And then Victoria suggests that she might be pregnant.

She’s not sure why Victoria makes that guess. She knows that she and Adam have been trying for a baby for a few months, so she wonders if Victoria just has baby brain and will suggest any woman who’s sexually active might be pregnant, but it does make Rebecca pause.

She has been feeling a little strange. Victoria did catch her coming out of the toilets after a bout of nausea. And as much as she tries to brush it off over the next few hours, the idea won’t leave her, and Victoria can clearly tell, because she gives Rebecca a lemonade and a pregnancy test.

It comes back positive.

For the first time in months, Rebecca is at a loss.

She’s pregnant.

That was in no way part of the plan. How is she going to get her revenge on Robert if she’s pregnant? Because Robert could be the father of her baby. They hadn’t used protection. Robert could have gotten her pregnant. Where does that leave her revenge? She can still use it to ruin his relationship with Aaron, but it’ll also mean that she can’t gloat the same way she’s planned to, because now Robert will be in her life forever.

As soon as that thought pops into her head, she pauses.

 _Robert will be in her life forever if he’s the father_.

She sits back down on the toilet and stares at the test in her hands.

She’s been ignoring it as much as she could, but she knows she still loves him. She tries not to, but she does. Even with her elaborate revenge plans, if he really _did_ split up with Aaron and said he had feelings for her, Rebecca would probably take him back. She’d probably make him work for it a little, but she’d fall into his arms, and she’d be _happy_.

She’s loved Robert for years now. Breaking her heart didn’t change that. Planning her very own revenge on him didn’t change it either. As much as she’s tried to stop herself and tried to ignore it, the truth is that Rebecca still loves Robert, more than she’s ever loved anyone else.

If this baby is Robert’s, it’ll tie the two of them together forever. She’ll never fully leave his life.

It’s the closest thing to a golden opportunity she’ll get. It’ll derail her revenge plans a little, because her plan hadn’t included allowing Robert to find any happiness with her at the end of it, but maybe she needs to accept her own feelings and try for a new plan. One that’ll break Robert’s heart by ruining his marriage to Aaron and his relationships with all of Aaron’s family, but will also give Rebecca what she wants.

She can keep the baby. She can say it’s Robert’s. She can stay close to him in the name of the baby, and one day, she might be able to soften him up. They’ll be a parent unit, a _family_ , and maybe one day, that’ll turn them into a real and proper family. Giving him a baby, the one thing Aaron can’t do, could maybe make Robert fall in love with her again. If she works it right, maybe it could happen.

Maybe.

Just maybe.

And then Rebecca would get both her revenge and her man.

The idea makes her feel lighter, and almost a little giddy. She rubs her face to make it red and schools her expression into something more distraught, and then heads back downstairs to give Victoria the result.

Victoria assumes Ross is the father. It’s a logical enough conclusion, and Rebecca hadn’t dwelled much on it when she’d been thinking in the bathroom, but she does know that that’s also a possibility. After all, she’s been sleeping with Ross a lot, and while _they’re_ careful to use protection, she knows it’s not always foolproof. Ross could also be the father of her baby.

But that won’t give Rebecca the new result she’s hoping for. That’ll just get her the revenge on Robert she wants, it won’t get Robert back in her arms. And maybe that’s what she should be hoping for, but it’s not.

She doesn’t want Ross to be the father.

But she doesn’t let on to Victoria at all, just says that it’s a mess, and makes her excuses to leave when Robert and Aaron walk into the room. She’s not supposed to spend too much time around either of them, or Robert (or Chas, when she gets back) will have her head, and besides, she needs to sort through a few things. Her new plan and her new acceptance of her love for Robert being some of those things.

She overhears Victoria telling Aaron softly and optimistically that this is a new start for him, and she hears Aaron and Robert both echo that sentiment. It makes her cry.

She supposes she’ll have to get used to that again. Now that she’s accepted that she still loves Robert and still wants him back, seeing them together and hearing about their love for each other is going to hurt a lot again, just like it did in October and November, but she can do it.

After all, she’ll be getting Robert back again before the end of the year, she’s sure of it.

 

**

 

It feels like all hell breaks loose between Rebecca and Robert after he finds out that she’s pregnant.

She’s not sure what she’d hoped for, exactly, but it’s not what she gets. He’s _furious_. He thankfully doesn’t demand a paternity test and just takes her word for it when she tells him that she’s sure it’s his, but he does demand, as much as he can, that she get an abortion.

It feels like a slap in the face that he’s so deeply angry about the baby. She hadn’t expected him to just accept it and hadn’t wanted him to either. She wants to reveal everything on her own terms, when she can get the most enjoyment out of her revenge, but she hadn’t expected his rejection to be so strong and angry.

It makes her wonder if she can win him back at all.

Only very briefly though, and then she brushes away that thought. He’s only angry because he’s still with Aaron, and this has the potential to ruin that. As soon as she destroys that marriage, she’s sure Robert will soften towards the baby, and eventually towards her.

But she goes along with Robert’s abortion plans for a while. And while she does, she considers it.

Having a baby is a lifelong life change. There won’t be any chance to go back.

Is she ready to be a mother?

Yes.

That’s the conclusion she comes to. _Yes_ , she feels ready, and _yes_ , she wants to. Not just to create a family with Robert, although that does play a part in it, but also because she actually, surprisingly, wants this baby just for the baby. She wants to be a mum. She wants a child of her own. She watched Chrissie’s happiness over baby Lachlan, and now, for the first time, she really and truly wants that for herself.

So she only goes along with Robert’s plan to lull him into a false sense of security. She has no intention of actually getting an abortion.

Not even when Ross suggests the same thing.

After all, Ross also assumes that he’s the father. Everyone thinks that he’s the only person Rebecca has slept with recently, so he must be the father, and he’s not overjoyed at the prospect of having another kid. He’s kinder about it than Robert is, but he also suggests an abortion.

Rebecca agrees with him that it’ll be for the best, and then does nothing to go through with any kind of abortion plans.

She continues to pretend for Robert and lets her very real heartbreak over his treatment of her pregnancy and her baby break through enough to cry real tears more than once. In a moment of weakness, she appeals to Robert’s promise from years ago that if she got pregnant again, they’d be a real family, because maybe she could push aside her revenge and just have the family she’s dreamed of for years now, but he refuses to even entertain the idea, and Rebecca packs away her hurt and puts her revenge plan to the front again.

Revenge first. Romance later.

And the whole thing just becomes more interesting (and honestly, more _fun_ ), when Ross sees Rebecca with Robert outside the doctor’s office she’d gone to, to get her pregnancy confirmed, and Ross comes to the conclusion that Robert must be the actual father of her baby.

He’s not too broken up about it. Possibly just because he gets to blackmail Robert over it, and that’ll soothe any hurt Ross feels, Rebecca knows.

She watches from the sidelines, amused, as Ross demands money and Robert tries to make sure Ross won’t be holding it over his head forever. It doesn’t seem to work, because Robert and Aaron leave out of nowhere to see Chas and Liv and go on the honeymoon they never got, and Rebecca is fairly certain they leave because Robert wants to get away from Ross. When they get back, Ross picks back up where he left off, and Robert pleads with Rebecca to have a word with him. Rebecca agrees, because she might as well try to soften Robert up a little preemptively, and when she tells Ross to stop, she’s surprised that he listens.

She wonders if Ross cares more about her than he’s letting on.

She also decides to tell Chrissie the truth. She tells her that she’s pregnant and that it’s Robert’s, and she’s thankful when Chrissie promises to be there for her throughout the whole thing. Rebecca will be on her own at first, and it’s nice to know that Chrissie will be there for her until she can win Robert round.

And just when everything looks like it’ll be going swimmingly, everything shatters.

She’s in the pub with Chrissie the day after Robert and Aaron moved into their new home when Aaron comes in and tells her that he knows.

He knows about the one-night stand. He knows she got pregnant.

And all Rebecca can think is _no_.

 _No, no, no_.

That’s not how it was supposed to go. _She_ was the one who was supposed to tell Aaron, _she_ was the one who was gonna blow Robert’s secret and make Aaron hate him and leave him. She was supposed to break their relationship to get her revenge. That was the only way she had left to do it – breaking up their marriage and making sure Robert’s heart was broken in the process.

And now she can’t.

She’s been working on this for months, and now it’s ruined.

It gets even worse when Aaron says he’s decided to forgive Robert, so she no longer has any hold over them,

 _No, no, no_.

That’s not how it was supposed to go.

Faintly, she manages to find it funny when Robert suggests that _Chrissie_ is the one who never got over Robert’s betrayal and has been planning revenge. If she weren’t so shocked to see her revenge plan fall to the floor, she might have found it funny.

As it is, she’s just angry.

And so is Chrissie, apparently, because she picks a fight with Robert and riles him up enough that when he fails at getting them to leave, he grabs Rebecca and says “You are _nothing_ , alright? You mean nothing to me!”

“Robert, don’t! She’s still pregnant!” Chrissie says.

And well.

That’s that cat out of the bag.

Not that Rebecca had ever actually told Robert she’d gotten the abortion, but she’d never told him that she’d decided not to go through with it either, so he’s probably assumed that the baby was no more.

This is also the moment where her dad finds out that she’s having Robert Sugden’s baby, and he’s not best pleased with it, which means Rebecca has more damage control to do with her own family and doesn’t have time to keep arguing with Robert and Aaron about the baby. They’ll have to wait until later.

 

**

 

Once she’s back home and her dad has calmed down, and she’s let all the revelations sink in, Rebecca finds herself so frustrated and angry, she wants to rip her own hair out.

Robert told Aaron.

Even with both Ross and Rebecca agreeing to back down and leave them alone, _Robert told Aaron_. He told him that he cheated. He told him that he slept with Rebecca. He told him that Rebecca was pregnant.

And _Aaron fucking forgave him_.

It was the perfect revenge. It was Robert coming on to Rebecca and getting her into bed, Rebecca the sorry victim of being played and lied to by Robert once again, it was Robert cheating on Aaron of his own volition, no encouragement from Rebecca needed, and yet Aaron still forgives him. Aaron is still apparently willing to put it behind them and move on. Aaron apparently loves him enough, or whatever, that Robert cheating won’t break their marriage.

It was supposed to be the perfect end to Rebecca’s revenge. She’s been working for months to worm herself as innocently as she could into their lives and their relationship. She’s made Aaron so jealous that he beat someone up and got sent to prison. She was so close to ruining Robert’s perfect little relationship and perfect little family. It was all supposed to end with Robert on his own, dumped by Aaron and left by everyone else, so he’d feel what Rebecca felt back in November.

And now it’s over. Now she can’t do that, because Aaron fucking forgave Robert for cheating. Robert still has his relationship. He still has his family. He still hasn’t felt what Rebecca felt.

She wants to rip her hair out, and she also wants to cry, both out of anger and out of yet another heartbreak.

Aaron hasn’t left Robert. And Robert certainly won’t leave Aaron.

Which means that Rebecca has practically no chance of winning him back now. So not only are her revenge plans in tatters, her hopes for an eventual reunion and family with Robert and the baby are also shattered, because Aaron forgave him and didn’t leave him.

Though, that thought does make her pause in her fuming.

She does have one hope left. The baby.

She wants the baby because she wants it, obviously. She hadn’t thought about it, but now that the opportunity has presented itself, she wants to be a mother, and she wants to be a mother to this particular baby. But on top of that, she wants the baby because it could be Robert’s. because this baby could join her and Robert together forever, make them a family forever, even if Robert won’t be in a relationship with her.

And now the baby is also the only way she has left to get her revenge.

She saw the way Aaron reacted to the news that she was still pregnant. He didn’t look best pleased. He might have been able to forgive Robert for cheating, but the baby is clearly a different dilemma all on its own, and Rebecca isn’t sure Aaron can face her and Robert having that lifelong connection. If she can just curb enough questions about her baby’s paternity, and just let Robert and Ross and Aaron all accept the same conclusion that Robert must be the father, then she can say the baby is Robert’s, and she’ll be tied to him forever. And _that_ might be the undoing of Robert’s relationship with Aaron.

She becomes even more convinced of this when Aaron comes to Home Farm to shout at her.

She’s not scared of him. He has some issues with anger and violence, yes, but as far as Rebecca can tell, it’s only when he’s pushed that he’ll lash out, so she’s not afraid that he’ll hurt her.

But she can use this to her advantage. She puts on a scared face and clutches her stomach, and it does the trick. Aaron’s face falls and his guilt becomes visible, and he shakily assures her that he’d never hurt the baby, and Rebecca takes the chance to just outright tell him to leave Robert.

“This is what he does to you. This is why we have to protect ourselves,” she begins. Hopefully, she can curb some of Aaron’s anger by making herself sound like another of Robert’s victims in this whole mess. Maybe she can get him to mellow out enough to listen to her if she pretends they’re alike, just a little bit “Can you really do this? Can you stand by him, cope, when the baby’s here? You came here to save your marriage. Save yourself, Aaron. Leave him.”

She knows it’s a long shot. She knows Aaron won’t leave Robert just because Rebecca says so, even if he’s clearly shaken by how his anger is making him act. She’s not counting on him listening to her and leaving Robert now, not after all he’s done to try and save his marriage.

But it’ll plant the idea in his head. It’ll plant the doubt over whether he can deal with the baby, with her in Robert’s life, whether he can handle acting like this for the rest of his life.

He doesn’t say anything. He just glares at her, with tears streaming down his face, and leaves.

And Rebecca smiles.

She can definitely work with this.

All she has to do now is make sure Aaron stays uncomfortable with the baby, make sure Robert stays _involved_ with the baby, no matter how reluctant he is, and just like she did when she started her revenge plan, she’ll worm her way into their lives and their relationship, and it’ll break them from the inside.

 

**

 

It’s not that hard, really. Robert stubbornly insists that he wants nothing to do with Rebecca or the baby, but Victoria won’t accept it and keeps pressuring him to be involved in the pregnancy, and Aaron doesn’t seem convinced that Robert will keep being indifferent when the baby’s born.

He also says he’ll support Robert no matter what he decided, which doesn’t entirely work for Rebecca, but while Victoria tells her that this is what Aaron has decided, when Rebecca sees him, it’s obvious that Aaron isn’t entirely unshaken by the whole thing.

And with the combined pressure of Victoria and Aaron, Robert shows up when Rebecca has scares and appointments. He always looks grumpy, and like he’d rather be anywhere else, but Rebecca knows that Robert won’t actually be forced into doing anything he doesn’t want to, so he may be reluctant and say it was other people’s ideas, but he _is_ showing interest. Even if it’s slightly forced.

Victoria seems convinced that if Robert just has to spend enough time around Rebecca and her pregnant belly, then he’ll come around. He’ll melt and start to care. And Rebecca agrees with her. If Robert is just exposed to her and the baby enough, she’ll eventually win him over. She can make him fall in love with the baby. They can be parents together, and eventually, they can be a family together too. She’s sure of it.

Aaron still provides an obstacle though. He doesn’t stop Robert from having access to the baby, but he’s clearly not entirely comfortable, and Robert still takes Aaron’s feelings into consideration more than he does anyone else’s, including his own.

And on top of that, Rebecca won’t be satisfied in a family with Robert until she’s gotten her revenge. She needs to get Aaron to leave him and break his heart.

She’s not getting _impatient_ , exactly, but things have changed now. She wants Robert back, or at least single, by the time she gives birth. She can’t wait around forever. And besides, she’s already been waiting for this for a long time (and she’s kind of regretting not just telling Aaron about the one-night stand herself. That would’ve gotten the revenge out of the way and she could just focus on slowly and subtly winning Robert back). She hopes she won’t have to wait too much longer.

But she doesn’t want to be too pushy, in case it reveals her true intentions, so she just continues to suggest involvement that Robert could have in her pregnancy and in the baby’s life, and she keeps an eye out for Aaron cracking as she does.

He’s definitely starting to crack already. Rebecca is sure she won’t have to wait long.

Everything is going pretty perfectly according to her revised plan.

It’s almost going too perfectly. A small part of Rebecca wonders if she should be looking out for something, because everything is working out almost too beautifully.

She slept with Robert. She got pregnant, and even if she isn’t sure if the baby is Ross’ or Robert’s, she’ll say it’s Robert’s and use that to ruin him and his marriage. Aaron might be willing to forgive Robert for cheating, but he’s not dealing very well with the baby. It’s perfect. Robert’s stupid mistake nearly cost him Aaron, and the results may be the final nail in the coffin of their relationship. And it’ll all have been part of Rebecca’s plan. Even if getting pregnant wasn’t part of the plan, or having Robert speak to her the way he did when he found out, she’s been able to play it all to her advantage. Robert and Aaron’s relationship will deteriorate, from the inside, and it’ll have been because of the seeds of chaos Rebecca planted.

It was Rebecca getting Robert to hang out with her more that made Aaron suspicious. It was their continued friendship that led to Robert and Aaron fighting, which led to Aaron getting sent to prison. It was Rebecca’s comfort that brought Robert back into her arms. It was also that comfort that made Robert cheat with her, of all people. It was that night that led to the baby in Rebecca’s belly, and all of this will ruin Robert, even if the baby might actually be Ross’.

It’s all going so perfectly according to Rebecca’s plans, it all plays so beautifully into her hands, and there’s a small part of her that worries if it’s going _too_ perfectly. But she ignores it in favor of just rejoicing smugly in all her success.

Until, of course, it all stops going perfectly according to plan.

She comes home from a meeting one day, to an empty house, goes to the kitchen to get something to drink, and freezes in the doorway.

Ross is standing awkwardly by the back entrance in the kitchen, hands in his pockets, looking kind of guilty, which is surprising, but not what makes her freeze entirely the way she does. No, she freezes because he’s not the only person in the room.

Cain Dingle is sitting at the dining table, leaning back casually, one foot on the other knee, looking perfectly comfortable. His face is mostly just carefully blank, but there’s a tiny hint of a smile at the corner of his mouth, and it makes something cold run down Rebecca’s spine.

“What are you doing here?” she asks. She tries to make her voice sound as hard as possible, but she doubts she succeeds enough to have any influence on Cain.

“I just have a few things to discuss with you, and I figured you’d prefer to do it in private,” Cain says.

“What could we possibly have to talk about?” Rebecca asks, eyes flickering to Ross.

Cain notices that. “I think you already know,” he says. “At least, that look you just gave Ross tells me you might have an idea.”

And she does. She hates it, but she does.

If Cain is here with Ross, Rebecca can only think of two things that could mean: either they’re pulling some kind of robbery or con, or they’re here about Rebecca’s baby.

She doesn’t say anything, though. Neither does Cain.

Which leaves the talking to Ross. “It’s about the father of your baby, Bex,” he says.

Shit.

“It’s Robert,” she says immediately.

“Yeah, so you say, but you don’t actually have any proof,” Cain says. “No DNA test, and you weren’t exactly celibate before you slept with Sugden, so you can’t prove that what you’re saying is true.”

“Why would I lie?” it’s a very shaky comeback, and Rebecca knows Cain can counter it.

“You were practically throwing yourself at him a few months ago, and you’ve kept on cozying up to him,” Cain says. “You might’ve had a thing going with Ross here, but that doesn’t mean that your feelings for Robert vanished into thin air.”

“So?”

“ _So_. That’s plenty of reason to lie. You might’ve hoped for a reunion to go with the baby,” Cain says, looking at Rebecca with a calm, calculating expression.

Rebecca has maybe always assumed that Cain isn’t the brightest, but perhaps she’s underestimated him. He’s probably not very book smart, but he’s street smart. He knows cons and tricks. It’s not that surprising that he’s guessed Rebecca might have a scheme. He hasn’t figured out what the scheme is, thank god, but he’s guessed that not everything is as Rebecca wants it to seem.

And unfortunately, he’s guessed that her baby’s paternity isn’t as certain as she’s claimed.

He’s even guessed some of the reasoning. Breaking Aaron and Robert up so she can get back with Robert and be a family with him and the baby. The only thing Cain hasn’t guessed is her revenge plan.

“Rebecca,” Ross says softly. “Do you know _for sure_ that Robert’s the dad?”

Rebecca doesn’t say anything.

“My nephew is going to pieces,” Cain says, shifting in his seat. With the position they’re in, Rebecca finds even the slightest movement ominous. “And you might not care about _your_ nephew, but I care about mine. I’m not gonna watch as his life falls apart if it doesn’t have to. So,” he stands up and approaches Rebecca. She has to fight every muscle in her body to not take a step back, away from him. Aaron might not scare her, but _Cain_ certainly does. “I’m gonna do what I can to make sure that he’s not losing Sugden for nothing. I’m not just gonna take your word for it. I want real proof that that baby is Robert’s.”

“I told him, me and Ross were always careful –” Rebecca starts, but Cain scoffs and rolls his eyes.

“Do you know how many people say that when they get pregnant?” he asks. “Vanessa and her boy toy were careful too, and then she got pregnant. Your word isn’t _proof_.”

“So what do you want me to do?” she can’t hide the way her voice shakes now. She has a pretty good idea what Cain wants her to do, and she doesn’t want to. Not yet, at least. It’ll ruin everything.

“I want you to get a DNA test, you idiot,” Cain says. _Shit_. “You’re gonna compare the baby’s DNA to Ross’s, and we’ll see what it says.  And before you start getting any ideas, we’ll be there every step of the process to make sure you don’t try to make any kind of deal with the doctors, and we’ll make sure Ross gets the results as well, not just you. Just to make sure you don’t make any changes.”

He’s thought of everything. He really has. He doesn’t trust her, and he’s thought of everything.

Rebecca looks at Ross, hoping for some kind of help, but as much as he looks awkward, he also looks resolute.

He wants to know the truth as well. He jumped on the idea that the baby might be Robert’s, because it meant that it wasn’t his. It meant that Ross didn’t have another accidental baby to deal with, that he didn’t have to be a father to anyone other than Moses. But Cain has probably talked to him, made him wonder again, and Ross isn’t a great person in a lot of ways, but he’s a good father, and when it comes to Moses, he’s learnt to take responsibility. Combine that with Cain’s probing, and Ross probably wants to know for definite whether or not he escaped a bullet, or if he has to bite it and step up for another baby.

Rebecca won’t be getting any help there. Ross is on Cain’s side.

She wants to protest. She probably could, to some extent, because it’s her baby and her body, but protests will only further Cain and Ross’ suspicions, and eventually it’ll get back to Aaron and Robert, and then at least Robert will also demand answers, and he can’t force her either, no, but the more Rebecca protests, the more suspicious it looks.

Cain has opened Pandora’s box, and now there’s no way to close it.

Rebecca is screwed.

 

**

 

True to his word, Cain and Ross accompany Rebecca to the clinic the next day so she can get a DNA test. She tries to hide her shaking the whole way, but she thinks they might both notice a few times that she’s shivering a little.

Ross looks sympathetic.

Cain looks pleased.

At the clinic, the nurse who does the test doesn’t seem to think there’s anything weird about Rebecca’s nerves. She’d kind of hoped someone would realize how uncomfortable she was and step in, but no. When the nurse realizes that she’s shaking a little, she looks at Ross and Cain, then back at Rebecca, and asks, “Trouble with paternity, huh?”

“Yeah, you could say that,” Rebecca says tightly.

“We just don’t know if it’s mine, and I really want to know,” Ross says. He’s calm and sounds sympathetic, and any hope Rebecca had that she might be able to get the nurse on her side vanishes.  She won’t screw with a man who just wants to know whether or not he’s going to be a father.

Rebecca wants to kick him and Cain out, wants to tell the nurse that she’s being pressured to do this, that she needs the results to say that Ross isn’t the dad, but she can’t, not now at least. Because they’re testing the baby’s DNA against Ross’s, and he’s said that he just wants to know if he’s the dad, and this nurse will now be sympathetic towards him. If Rebecca tries to do anything, the nurse will want to know why, and that’s if she’d even hear Rebecca out in the first place. There would also be a chance that the nurse would just get angry with Rebecca for even suggesting fraud like that.

It won’t work. Rebecca knows it won’t work, and as she sits there, and the nurse takes what she needs from Rebecca and Ross to determine paternity, it starts to sink in.

Her plan might be ruined.

It’s been derailed and even if she scrambles to salvage some of it, if the results come back that Ross is the father of her baby, then her plan is ruined. She’ll have no choice but to abandon it, and Robert probably won’t leave her any choice but to come clean about why she lied so insistently.

She’ll have to tell him that she wanted to mess with him. That she wanted to punish him. That she could use the baby to ruin Robert’s marriage to Aaron, by making sure that they’d always have that connection and reminder of what they did.

That she’d wanted Robert to eventually forgive her for that and be a family with her.

If Ross is the father, all of that will come out, and Robert will never forgive her after that, she’s sure. She’s already had to give up on a lot of the gloating when she finally manages to break up Robert and Aaron, because if she gloats too much, then Robert won’t be likely to forgive her any time soon, but at least she’d have the private knowledge that she broke Robert’s heart, and eventually, hopefully, that she’d have him back and she’d have won.

If Ross is the father, that won’t happen. Maybe she’ll be able to go back to her original plan and just gloat, except that it’ll probably mean that Robert and Aaron’s relationship survives, so she won’t have anything to gloat about. Instead of her winning, Robert will have won.

These thoughts keep going round and round in her head for days as she waits for the DNA results. It keeps her awake at night, as she tries to scramble some kind of satisfying result for herself together.

She considers waking up early enough each morning that she can catch when the post arrives and hurry down to Ross’ place and steal his mail. She’s heard about Rakesh forging the Vanessa’s paternity results to get his teenage son out of being a father, and instead made it look like Adam was the father. But then again, she’s also heard about the heartbreak and anger that whole mess caused, so maybe it’s not a great plan. And besides, even though her thoughts keep her awake several nights, she’s in no way enough of a morning person to get up early enough to steal Ross’ mail. Especially because he’s living with his brother, who works at a farm and gets up early pretty much every day.

All she can do is pray to every deity she’s ever heard of that Robert actually _is_ the father of her baby. Because if he is, then nothing will have been ruined.

The wait is agonizing.

Chrissie and her dad both seem to sense that something is bothering her, but Chrissie only asks once, and she accepts Rebecca’s answer that she’s just feeling kind of nauseous a lot. Victoria seems to notice that Rebecca is keeping more of a distance to Robert and tells her not to let Robert push her away too much. It’s a nice sentiment, Rebecca supposes, but it also annoys her.

Victoria spends a lot of time butting in. Rebecca appreciates her help when she tries to push Robert to be more involved, but that doesn’t mean that she wants Victoria to be a particularly big part of her pregnancy, and that seems to be exactly what Victoria wants. It’s only becoming more annoying now that Rebecca’s nerves are more frayed and she’s a little more tense, as she waits for the DNA results.

She doesn’t have to wait for too long.

A week after they’d gone to the clinic, when Aaron is looking more broken than Rebecca has ever seen him and Robert is getting more desperate to make him happy, the paternity results arrive.

It’s a simple white envelope with the clinic’s emblem stamped in the corner.

To Rebecca, it looks like a bomb.

She’s home alone, and she’s thankful for that. Her dad is off at a business conference, and Chrissie had to take care of an emergency in one of her salons, so she’d left early.

No one is around to see the results. No one is around to see Rebecca’s reaction to the results.

She rips the envelope open and carefully unfolds the paper. It’s a struggle to keep her eyes open and her breathing steady, and she doesn’t entirely manage. She can hear her heart beating as she unfolds the last flap of the paper.

And then it falls from her trembling fingers to the floor. The side with the result is facing up, like it’s staring at her, judging her.

There is a 100% chance that Ross Barton is the father of her baby.

 _Shit_.

The room is silent, but Rebecca’s ears are ringing. She can see her carefully constructed plans, her smug revenge and her new hope, all shatter like glass on a marble floor.

Robert isn’t the father.

 _Robert isn’t the father_.

A part of her wants to cry. She wants to cry for her ruined plans for revenge, because she definitely doesn’t come out of this looking great. She deliberately let everyone believe that Robert was the father without actually knowing, never correcting anyone that she hadn’t taken a paternity test and thus didn’t know for sure. She won’t be getting the revenge she’d originally wanted either, because this is far more likely to salvage Robert and Aaron’s marriage than ruin it. She’s lost the last opportunity to break Robert’s heart.

She wants to cry because she’d let herself accept her love for Robert, and had adjusted her plans to hope for a future for them. She’d allowed herself to plan ways to eventually win Robert back and be a family with him, and now it’ll never happen. He will never forgive her for deceiving him like this.

Because she’ll have to admit it. As soon as Robert and Aaron find out that she’s been lying about paternity, they’ll demand to know why, and she’ll have to tell them everything.

Her plans are _ruined_. She wants to _cry_.

But she doesn’t. She’s stronger than that. And she’s also too angry, because _what a waste_. All the planning she’s been doing since December, all the little things she did to get between Robert and Aaron, it’s all gone to waste now. All her work, down the drain.

She should’ve revealed the one-night stand as soon as Aaron came home. It was her golden opportunity. She shouldn’t have tried to push for more, shouldn’t have gotten cocky and assumed she’d had more time.

She shouldn’t have let herself love Robert and hope for him to love her back. It ruined all her revenge plans.

And now it’s ruined her last chance for revenge _and_ her last chance with Robert.

She takes a deep breath.

Okay. Okay.

She can salvage something from this.

She can’t get the revenge or the man she’d wanted, but she can still get something. She can get a reaction from Robert. If she gets to him and Aaron before Ross or Cain, then she can spin revealing her baby’s paternity her way. She can shout at Robert and reveal all she’d planned to do, and she can show her true colors and show how willing she was to stab him in the back.

She’ll leave out that she still loves him and hope that he reacts to someone he considered a friend playing him like a violin. Hopefully he’ll make a facial expression worth it.

It’s all Rebecca has left.

 

**  


She takes her time getting ready. She wants to look the right amount of vindictive and smug without it being too much. She wants to look like she’s in control. She picks out a hat and a pair of sunglasses to wave around as she makes her big reveal, both chosen to add a dramatic flair to her look, and then drives down to the pub.

It’s not even lunch yet. She doubts Aaron and Robert are even in there. Instead, she walks over to Ross’ house and knocks on the door.

When Ross opens and sees her, his face goes hard. He doesn’t say anything, just steps aside and lets her in, and closes the door carefully after her.

“You were certain it was Robert’s,” he says. He sounds suspiciously calm.

Rebecca doesn’t exactly feel great for lying to him like this, but he was only ever a small piece in a bigger puzzle. If she’d let herself be knocked back by little things like that, she’d never have gotten anywhere with her revenge scheme. Aaron and Liv would have kept her from doing anything.

“I really thought it was,” Rebecca says. It’s not entirely a lie. She’d known there was a chance it was Robert’s, and she’d let herself and everyone else cling onto that. “So did you.”

“When I saw the two of you together,” Ross grits out. “I knew something had to have happened between you, so I figured you already knew he was the real dad for sure.”

“I thought we’d been too careful. Me and Robert hadn’t been careful at all,” Rebecca explains.

Ross doesn’t look inclined to punch her or anything, which is nice, but he does look angry. “Does Cain know yet?” she asks.

“Not yet,” Ross replies. “I wanted to talk to you myself before I let him at you.”

“Well, could you not tell him for a bit? I want to tell Robert and Aaron myself,” Rebecca asks. Ross looks a little amused at that.

“Aw, are you gonna make sure you don’t look like a pathetic ex or something?” he asks patronizingly.

Rebecca glares at him. “No. I have some things I want to say to Robert, preferably in front of as many people as possible, so I want to do it in the pub at lunch,” she explains.

“Oh?” all anger seems to leave Ross’ face and gets replaced with intrigue. “What’s that then?”

“Come to the pub at lunchtime and you’ll find out,” she says.

Ross looks to be considering for a moment. “Alright, I won’t tell anyone yet,” he promises. Rebecca sighs, relieved.

“Thanks,” she says. She leaves before he can ask any more questions.

It’s a few hours before lunchtime, and she spends some of it in the café, drinking tea and eating cake, and some of it outside walking around, preparing what she’s going to say.

As the time nears Robert’s usual lunch break, she texts him to bring Aaron down to the pub so she can tell the both of them something important, and then heads to the pub. She orders an orange juice and sits at the bar, ignoring Victoria sending her concerned looks every time she comes out to deliver food to someone. She also ignores Ross when he comes in and orders a pint.

She manages to finish her orange juice before Robert and Aaron arrive. They both look nervous. Apprehensive.

“Good, you’re both here,” Rebecca says in the coldest tone she can muster. She gets off her chair so she’s standing just about in the middle of the pub. The spot where she’ll have the most attention.

If this is going to be in any way satisfying, then she needs as much attention as possible.

“What did you want?” Robert asks.

“Ross is the father of my baby,” Rebecca says, as coldly as she can manage. Might as well deliver that bombshell first.

Jaws drop and eyes widen all around her. Both Robert and Aaron look shocked. It’s kind of pleasing, in a way, until their shock starts glinting a little with relief and happiness.

“Are you serious?” Robert asks. Rebecca pulls the paternity test out of her purse and hands it over.

It’s quiet while Robert and Aaron read it over and let the information sink in. Then Robert looks up at her, confused and wary and slightly angry. “If you only just got this now, why did you tell me you were sure it was mine?”

“Because I wanted to get my payback on you for what you did to me last year,” Rebecca says. Robert frowns, and so does Aaron. “Remember when you told me you’d been using me from the moment I got here? And the next day, I came here and told everyone that we’d kissed? That was my first attempt at ruining something in _your_ life, the way it felt like you’d ruined mine.”

“I didn’t ruin your life!” Robert protests.

“You made me stitch up my own family, and you made me think you wanted me to make sure I did whatever you asked!” Rebecca shouts. She can’t make herself look too much like a pathetic ex, like what Ross called her, but she does have to reveal some of her feelings to reveal everything else. “You flirted with me and strung me along and made me turn my back on the only family I have left, by making me think at the end of it, I’d at least have you. Only then you told me you’d just been playing me all along, like I was some pathetic little girl, and yes, okay, I was heartbroken. I came here the next day and told everyone we’d kissed because I wanted _you_ to be heartbroken too.”

Robert glances at Aaron standing next to him, and then looks back at Rebecca. He’s clearly nervous about what else she’ll say, but underneath that, undeniable anger is simmering. She can see it in his eyes.

Aaron looks back and forth between the two a few times. “Only, Aaron didn’t exactly react like I’d expected. Apparently, you two are so big on telling the truth, he already knew,” Rebecca continues. “And apparently, I’m not a real threat to you. I knew from that moment, if I wanted revenge on you for what you did to me, I’d have to be smarter about it.”

“What do you mean?” Aaron asks, voice dangerously low.

“You know how I was suddenly involved in my dad’s business and needed Robert’s help all the time?” Rebecca asks. She can’t help the smile that’s starting to grow on her face. “I wasn’t that desperate. I could’ve worked most of it out myself, and I certainly didn’t need his help to do the same things as many times as I said I did. But I kept coming back, asking him for help, because I knew you’d hate it, Aaron. I knew that if I kept spending time with him, you’d snap. I didn’t expect you to snap that hard in Kasim’s face, but –”

Aaron jerks forward, but Robert stops him with an arm around his waist before he can get very far.

“You mean you made me jealous on purpose?” Aaron seethes. Rebecca shrugs, nonchalant. “I felt like I was going _mad_ , over nothing but _looks_ , and it was all deliberate?”

“Yeah,” Rebecca says. “I could see it on your face every time I asked Robert to work with me. I knew you hated it. I knew the two of you argued about me. If I just kept pushing, just a little at a time, I knew the two of you would implode, somehow. Either Aaron would get fed up of being jealous all the time, or Robert would get fed up of Aaron not trusting him. Either way, it was what I wanted. That way, Robert would feel some of what I felt when he used me.”

“I didn’t set out to ruin your life! You _agreed_ to help me clear Andy’s name, I never _forced_ you to do anything!” Robert shouts. He’s still got an arm around Aaron’s waist, even though it no longer looks like Aaron is going anywhere.

“It was the _way_ you went about making sure I didn’t have second thoughts. I felt so cheap, and so used, like I was nothing, and it was down to _you_ ,” Rebecca says, putting as much venom into her voice as she can. “So I decided to give you a little taste of your own medicine. I used _you_ , to get my revenge on you. I used you by spending more time with you than I needed to, so you wouldn’t get to play happy families with Aaron. But again, I didn’t expect him to beat seven shades out of someone and go to prison. Worked out in my favor, though.”

Aaron looks furious, but he doesn’t move. He takes deep, deliberate breaths, probably to keep from lashing out again.

“I also didn’t expect you to want to get me into bed like you did, but I wasn’t about to turn away from that opportunity,” Rebecca continues, smiling. “I went along with everything you said and pretended to believe it, so that you’d feel guilty the next day when you told me that you only wanted Aaron.”

“You said I made you feel cheap and used,” Robert says, sounding confused.

“You did. Just not that time. I think I might have used you as much as you used me, that night,” Rebecca says, and this time, it’s Aaron who has to hold back Robert. “You wanted to use me to hurt Aaron. I just wanted to use you to break your precious marriage.”

“But then why didn’t you just tell everyone? That would’ve done the trick, right?” Robert says.

“It wasn’t going to be satisfying until Aaron was out of prison, and I could see his reaction,” Rebecca says. “And I didn’t think telling him the day he came home would be very nice of me.”

“ _Nothing_ you’ve done since you got here has been _nice_! Why was that any different?” Aaron spits.

Rebecca shrugs. “I just didn’t feel like it that day, I suppose,” she says. “And then, of course, I found out I was pregnant. And before I had time to work that into my little scheme, Robert apparently decided to be honest with you and told you everything.” She looks at Robert. “Kind of took the winds out of my sails, there.”

 “But why lie about the paternity?” Robert asks. He doesn’t look all that crushed that the baby isn’t his. In fact, he looks relieved, and it makes Rebecca both angry and upset. She settles on using the anger for her performance.

“Because it was another way I could get under Aaron’s skin and shake things up between you two,” she says. “I could tell that the idea of me and you being connected forever got on his nerves. I just had to make sure you were a little involved, and I could see him crumbling. I knew eventually it would break you.”

“You little –” Robert cuts himself off. He takes a deep breath and puts an arm around Aaron’s shoulders.  Whether it’s to steady himself or comfort the both of them, Rebecca can’t tell. “So why get a paternity test now? Doesn’t that ruin your whole plan?”

“Ross wanted one,” Rebecca says. “Cain apparently remembered, unlike anyone else, that I hadn’t actually given any proof that you were the father of my baby, and he wanted to make sure poor little Aaron wasn’t suffering for nothing, so he talked to Ross, and Ross wanted me to be sure.”

“And that was it? All that work you put into your little revenge plan, and you just gave it up, just like that?”  Robert asks, incredulous.

“I didn’t exactly have good reason to say no. And I knew that if I did, they’d tell you I had refused, and then you’d come demanding I get a paternity test done, just like you demanded that I get an abortion.”

“Yeah, but you ignored me then, didn’t you?” Robert asks bitterly.

“I also knew that if I ignored you with this, you’d just keep asking _why_ I was refusing, so I figured I might as well get it over and done with,” Rebecca explains. “And congratulations, you’re not going to be a father.” The pub is silent for a minute. Everyone is looking at either Rebecca, Robert, Aaron, or Ross, who Rebecca’s been able to see out of the corner of her eye the entire time. “So, in the end, things didn’t exactly go according to my plan but… I did get to see you suffer, didn’t I? When you and Aaron were fighting all the time. When Aaron went to prison. When you tied yourself up in knots to make sure I didn’t tell anyone and let Ross blackmail you to keep him quiet as well. It’s not exactly what I wanted, but, hey, I’ll take what I can get.”

“You really hate me that much, that you did all that?” Robert asks. “You didn’t even care about anyone else, did you?”

“No. Or at least, not as much as I wanted to see you suffer,” Rebecca replies.

She knows that as soon as the shock settles, she’ll be a social piranha. She’s just admitted to completely disregarding Aaron, a generally well-loved villager, as well as Liv and Ross, in her desire for revenge on Robert for using her. She won’t be popular once everyone shakes out of the surprise her little moment here has created.

So before any of them can stop gaping at her, she smiles the most smug, poisonous smile she can muster, and leaves the pub.

 

**

 

News travel fast in a small village. Chrissie comes home, goes down to the pub, and comes back again quickly enough that she must only have been down there for five minutes. Before she’s even come up to Rebecca’s room, Rebecca knows that the villagers have told Chrissie everything.

“You lied about the baby being Robert’s?” is what Chrissie opens with.

Rebecca is sitting in her bed with her phone, but she looks up to give Chrissie a sheepish look. “Yes,” she admits.

“Did – did you really… do all those things to make Robert suffer?” Chrissie asks. She sounds kind of horrified. Rebecca quirks an eyebrow.

“I didn’t think _you’d_ feel _sorry_ for him,” she says.

“I don’t. And I don’t feel sorry for Aaron either, but…” Chrissie trails off and sits down at the foot of Rebecca’s bed. “But it just seems like a lot. You inflicted a lot of hurt on a lot of people to get revenge on _one_ person. I mean, what about Ross? Didn’t he deserve to know that it’s his baby?”

“He knows now, doesn’t he?” Rebecca shrugs.

Chrissie sighs. “Rebecca, I hurt a lot of people when I got my revenge on Robert for cheating on me. And it was _not_ worth it,” she says.

“I didn’t accidentally knock a helicopter out of the sky,” Rebecca says, rolling her eyes. “No one died. And I’m not having a go at you, or anything, I’m just saying. What I did is very different. So what if Aaron got hurt? _I_ didn’t send him to prison. And it wasn’t _my_ idea that Robert sleep with me. I just… used it all to my advantage.”

Chrissie seems to consider her words for a bit. Then, very slowly, she starts to smile a little.

“I suppose it’s really only what they deserve,” she says. She gets up and heads for the door. “I’ll get started on some dinner.” She’s about to walk out when she turns back around. “Oh, but Rebecca… I’d suggest not going down to the village for a few days. You’re not exactly _popular_.”

“Yeah, I figured,” Rebecca mumbles, smiling. It’s worth being unpopular with that lot for the reaction she got from Aaron and Robert.

It’s not what she had imagined. Or what she had wanted. But considering that it was all she could get, she’ll take it. And she has to enjoy it now, because the repercussions will start hitting her soon. Chrissie might not hate her, and maybe her dad won’t either, but everyone else…

The Dingles will obviously hate her for what she did to Aaron. The Sugdens won’t be too happy either, for planning an elaborate revenge on one of their own and disregarding everyone else in the process. Not even Victoria will be there for her, baby be damned. The Bartons also won’t go anywhere near her corner, given that most of them love Aaron, and that she lied to Ross about the paternity of her baby. Maybe Emma will be willing to be seen with her, if her love for her grandson Moses is anything to go by. She might tolerate Rebecca simply for carrying another grandchild. But other than that, Rebecca can’t think of anyone involved with anyone affected by her plans being on her side.

Ross texts her later.

 

_Great performance, but we still need to talk_

 

Rebecca doesn’t really feel in the mood to have the serious talk with Ross that she needs, so she texts him back that he can come to hers the next day and leaves it at that.

The rest of the world can wait for a while longer.

She and Chrissie have dinner together, and Chrissie cracks open a bottle of wine and some sparkling apple cider and asks Rebecca to tell her the whole story. They spend the night reveling in Rebecca’s meddling and Robert’s misery, and talking and laughing about him and his many, many flaws.

It’s a very good night, in Rebecca’s book. She goes to bed feeling quite happy, even though she knows she’s persona non grata in the village, and even though she knows that she needs to go down there to have a very serious chat with Ross. It doesn’t matter as she tucks herself in, full of good food and good company.

Her plan is over and done with. She didn’t get much out of it in the end, except the looks on Robert and Aaron’s faces, and a general sense of having finally revealed what her master plan was.

She didn’t get either of her end goals. She didn’t break Robert and Aaron’s relationship. She didn’t get Robert to like her again, and she won’t in the future either, she knows. If he’d been the father of her baby, she could have done it. She could have given him a family and made him love it, love _her_. But he’s not the father, and he won’t be going anywhere near her for a long time, except possibly to shout at her.

But that’s a loss to cry about at another time, when she can let herself be that heartbroken and vulnerable again.

 

**

 

The reason why Rebecca wants Ross to come to him is so she doesn’t have to go down to the village. She doubts that would be a pleasant experience at the moment. And Ross isn’t as stupid as he can sometimes seem. The first thing he says when Rebecca opens the door is, “Didn’t want to see what the rest of the village would do to you if you showed your face, I take it?”

“Something like that, yeah,” Rebecca says, leading Ross into the kitchen. She’s made eggs and bacon, and she gives Ross a plate before she sits down with her own. Despite recent evidence to the contrary, she _does_ have manners. “So. We needed to talk.”

“Yeah,” Ross sighs and glances at Rebecca’s stomach, where her baby bump is now visible, before tucking into his breakfast. “You clearly didn’t plan for things to turn out like this.”

“No, I didn’t,” Rebecca admits. There’s no need to lie, not anymore.

She strokes her bump a little. Things have changed now. She still wants to be a mum, still wants what Chrissie had with Lachlan, still wants a baby to hold and cuddle and love, but things are undeniably different. When she decided to keep the baby, it wasn’t _just_ because of Robert, but he had, admittedly, been a big part of it. She’s wanted to be a parent since not long after she found out she was pregnant, a desire dragged up from that time, years ago, when she got pregnant the first time and dreamed of having a family with Robert, only for him to freak out and insist she got an abortion, so he could keep their affair a secret from Chrissie. She’s wanted to be a parent since a few hours after her test came back positive, but when she embraced that desire, she did so because she thought shed be a parent _with Robert_. Whether or not she could eventually win him back, she’d thought that they would always have this connection of being parents together, and that had been a pretty big part of her decision to keep the baby.

If she’s honest with herself, she knows that if she had gotten this DNA test right from the start, she might have gone through with that abortion Robert wanted her to get. Ross is a good dad, and Rebecca likes him, but the idea of being a parent with him for the rest of her life wouldn’t have had nearly as big a drawing effect as Robert. Facing single motherhood with Ross as the father wouldn’t have been nearly as appealing as facing single motherhood with Robert.

Though that is where she’s at now.

“So what are you planning to do now?” Ross asks.

“Well, it’s too late to do anything now,” Rebecca says, laughing a little, in a feeble attempt to lighten the atmosphere from the heavy one currently hanging over them.

“I know that,” Ross says. “I mean like… are you staying? Or do you wanna get away from Robert, and the rest of the village now that they all hate you? Do… do you want me to be involved?”

Rebecca takes her time to formulate her answers. “I’m not planning on going anywhere. It’ll be a while before I can show my face in the pub again, but my family’s here. I want to be close to them, and I’ll need their help and support. I’m not going anywhere near Robert again, but I’m staying here,” she says. She decides not to mention that she’s not going anywhere, unless her family decide to leave. She’ll stick close to them for a few years now. “I guess I want you to be as involved as you want to be. When I wanted Robert to be involved, I had different motivations, so I pushed him a little more, but if you want to be there, then I won’t stop you. I know how much Moses means to you, and you’re a good dad. I won’t keep this baby from you. So… I guess it’s up to you. Whatever you want to do.”

Ross looks contemplative for a moment. He glances between Rebecca’s face and her tunny a few times before he lets out a sigh.

“I know I said I wasn’t really ready for another kid. I wasn’t ready for Moses either,” Ross says, shrugging. “But… I don’ think I can’t be involved at all.” He looks her straight in the eyes. “I love Moses. He’s the best, most important thing in my life, and I’ll probably feel something like that for this one too. Eventually. But I don’t know if I’m ready for another kid yet, and until I am… if you don’t mind, I’ll just… see as I go along?”

“What do you mean?” Rebecca asks.

“I mean, I’ll be here. I’ll come to the appointments and whatever, if I feel comfortable and if you want me to, and after it’s born, I’ll see it every now and then, and I’ll help pay as much as I can, but… you can have the baby most of the time. While I get used to having another one. I’ll… _ease_ myself in or whatever, until I feel ready. If that’s okay with you?” Ross looks unsure, so Rebecca smiles at him, to make him feel more at ease.

“It’s fine with me. I told you, I’m open to whatever you want,” she says.

It’ll also give her a chance to get used to the idea of being connected to Ross for the rest of her life, to being parents with him and not Robert. Robert is the only man she’s ever imagined having a family with, _ever_ , and it’s strange to suddenly be having a family with someone else.

Ross looks relieved.

They sit in silence for a while. It’s not really awkward or uncomfortable, but they keep glancing at each other, and sometimes they make eye contact, and _that’s_ a little awkward.

Eventually, Ross puts his fork down on his empty plate and says, “Be honest with me. You sill have feelings for Robert, don’t you?” Rebecca’s head whips up to look at him in surprise, eyes wide and hands frozen, hovering above her plate. “It’s why you decided to keep the baby, and why you didn’t do a paternity test on you own, isn’t it? You thought maybe the baby could lead to something more.”

Well. She certainly hadn’t expected that.

Ross really isn’t as stupid as he sometimes seems.

“Why… why would you think that?” Rebecca asks. Her voice shakes a little.

“Because I’m not _that_ stupid,” Ross says, rolling his eyes.

“Like I said yesterday, I wanted to punish him for what he did to me,” Rebecca says.

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you don’t love him,” Ross says. He looks sad, like he knows this from experience. “If all this was only about making Robert suffer and ruining his life, you’d have just told Aaron about the baby yourself and revealed everything then, when you were still in control of the situation, but you didn’t. And you didn’t get a paternity test either, even though everyone was asking you if you were sure –”

“You also assumed it was Robert’s, after you saw us together. You didn’t need a test to convince you,” Rebecca interrupts, annoyed. “And the baby being yours wouldn’t help a whole lot with my revenge on Robert.”

“I assumed cause I saw you two arguing outside the clinic. And I assumed you had reason for knowing,” Ross fires back. “You wanted the baby to be Robert’s, but not just for your revenge. Like I said, you’d have just revealed sleeping with him to Aaron before Robert could, and you’d have revealed everything else too, while you were still the one in control. No, you waited because you started playing the long game. Cause you needed a good time to reveal your scheme and get your revenge, but you also needed to make sure that you didn’t lose Robert permanently, because the reason you even kept the baby was because you still love him.”

“Alright fine!” Rebecca snaps. “I still love him. I wanted to win him back, eventually. Satisfied?”

Ross shrugs. “Not really. It’s none of my business now, what you feel for Robert.”

Rebecca sags, shoulders slumping, and she stares forlornly at her plate.

“I hated him. I wanted him to feel the way he made me feel. I wanted to break his heart,” she says. She doesn’t look up, but she can feel Ross’ eyes on her. “I wanted to ruin his life, the way it felt like he’d ruined mine. He played me when he told me to come here. I thought he called me because my dad was in danger with Lachlan and Chrissie.”

“Not exactly lying about that, was he,” Ross comments.

Rebecca looks up to give him a weak glare. He just shrugs, as if to say, _I’m just saying_ , and Rebecca can’t really argue with him. Lachlan _did_ shoot Lawrence, and Chrissie _did_ cover it up.

“But all he really wanted was my help to make them slip up, so he could clear Andy’s name,” she continues, as if Ross hadn’t said anything. “He didn’t want to help my dad, and he didn’t want me. But he made me think he did. He acted the way he always did around me, when we were together behind Chrissie’s back. Except that he also pushed me away and said he only wanted Aaron, and I couldn’t figure out if he meant his words or his actions, more. Turned out it was his words. He only acted the way he did so I’d do whatever he wanted.”

“I’m sorry, but it doesn’t really sound like you made it that hard for him to manipulate you,” Ross says gently.

“Maybe I didn’t, but it was because I thought he still wanted me. He’s always wanted me,” Rebecca says.

“Only now he’s a changed man.”

“Apparently.” Rebecca feels miserable. She hasn’t felt this miserable since November.

“But what I don’t get is how that would work into your revenge plans,” Ross says with a frown. “If you always wanted to reveal that you were out to ruin his life, that’d hardly make him change his mind.”

“It didn’t fit in at all, at first,” Rebecca explains. “At first, I ignored any feelings I had for him. I wanted to see him suffer more than I wanted _him_ , and I knew he didn’t want me anyway, so why bother with feelings for him.” She sighs. “But then I got pregnant.”

“And that changed it?”

“It changed everything,” Rebecca says. “I knew it could be a good opportunity to ruin his relationship with Aaron, but more than that… I let myself love him again.”

“Why?” Ross asks.

“Because I knew there was a chance it’d be Robert’s, and that meant, if I decided to keep it, that we’d be connected forever,” Rebecca replies.

“So why not just get rid of it, like he wanted, if you wanted to hate him?”

“Because I _didn’t_ hate him. I ignored it, but I still loved him, and the baby gave me an opportunity to not just break up Robert and Aaron’s marriage, but to stay in Robert’s life forever. I thought maybe if I did, and if I didn’t tell him what I’d done to split them up, I could win Robert over. The baby would give us a connection, one he can’t ever have with Aaron, and I thought, if I could get Aaron to leave him, then I could work on getting Robert to love me again,” Rebecca explains. Ross looks sympathetic, but he also looks like he thinks Rebecca is dumb and naïve.

“You know it doesn’t work like that, right?” he asks.

“I was hoping it _would_ , just this once. We’d be a family, and if I could get him to love that family, I could get him to love _me_ ,” Rebecca says.

“And then me and Cain ruined that by demanding the paternity test,” Ross concludes.

“Yes,” Rebecca says tersely. They certainly did ruin all her plans. “Why did he insist on that anyway?”

“He told you. His precious nephew was struggling, and he wasn’t having that,” Ross scoffs. Rebecca knows that Ross isn’t overly fond of Aaron, though she’s not sure why. “He told me he’d been thinking of ways to help, and it had suddenly hit him that you’d never actually proved to anyone that Robert was the dad, and that me and you had been going at it around the same time. We might’ve been careful, but there wasn’t any guarantee that it wasn’t mine.”

“I was hoping no one would think too much about that,” Rebecca says bitterly. “Robert and Liv both mentioned it, and you did too, but I shut them down as fast as I could. I knew it would ruin everything.”

Ross doesn’t say anything. Neither does Rebecca. They just sit in silence for a bit, glancing at each other every now and again. Rebecca strokes her stomach absentmindedly.

“I was surprised when you decided to keep the baby,” Ross says eventually. Rebecca frowns at him. “You’re not exactly the _maternal_ type.”

“I can become it, though, can’t I?” Rebecca says.

“Sure. I wasn’t the paternal type either, but now Moses is the most important thing in my life,” Ross says. He clears his throat. “Anyway. Thanks for breakfast. I’ll head out now.”

Rebecca follows him to the door, promising him to let him know when she has doctor’s appointments, so he can decide whether or not he wants to go, and Ross promises to keep thinking about how much he’s ready for and how much he’s willing to do. Then he’s out the door and Rebecca is closing it behind him, and she’s alone again.

 

**

 

Rebecca isn’t planning on going down to the village for at least a few days, but she also doesn’t realistically expect to be left alone.

Robert and Aaron will surely have some things to say to her. Victoria too, and maybe also Diane. She hopes Cain will stay away, and she’s glad Chas isn’t back yet to confront her, because she’s sure she’d get another slap if she was.

The first one to come see her is Victoria. She bangs loudly on the door later that same day, and Rebecca schools her expression to hide the dread she’s feeling when she opens the door.

“I can’t believe you did that,” Victoria says, pushing past Rebecca to get inside.

“Come in, why don’t you,” Rebecca mumbles sarcastically.

“Oh no, you don’t get to be like that when _you’re_ the one who’s been lying and scheming behind everyone’s backs for the last seven months. Cause that _is_ how long it’s been going on, isn’t it? Since Robert refused to help break out your psycho nephew, just so you could feel better about turning your back on your family.”

“That was the tipping point, yes,” Rebecca says coolly.

“What did he ever do to you?” Victoria hisses.

“Didn’t anyone tell you what I said? He made me turn my back on my own family, and he strung me along like he wanted me –”

“None of that was his fault!” Victoria shouted. “ _You_ agreed to help clear Andy’s name. You could’ve walked away, if your family meant that much to you, but you didn’t. He didn’t _force_ you to help him. And he never hid from you that he was with Aaron, so any idea you had about you and him was all in your head!”

“He _said_ he was with Aaron, and then he _flirted_ with me and pushed Aaron aside to spend time with me. Everything he did was the same as when we were together last –”

“Behind Chrissie’s back.”

“And he _admitted_ to me that he’d been stringing me along to make sure I stayed on his side.”

“So what, when he got the result he wanted, you thought the two of you would run off into the sunset together, and when that didn’t happen, you decided to throw a fit?” Victoria asks. “I know as well as anyone that Robert can be mean when he wants to, and I know he uses people to get his way, but you can’t just blame it all on him. You _wanted_ him, and if you hadn’t, none of this would’ve been a problem in the first place! The only reason you got your little heart broken was because _you’d_ made up some fantasy about the two of you having something!”

“He didn’t do anything to dissuade me,” Rebecca says defensively. “He knew how I felt, and instead of just setting me straight, he used it against me to make me do what he wanted.”

“You know, I get that you’re angry about that. But you didn’t have to do everything you did. Did you not care about Aaron at all when you wormed your way into Robert’s life?”

“No, I didn’t,” Rebecca says. Victoria looks at her like she can’t believe what she’s hearing. It’s maybe not that surprising. Rebecca has always played nice with Victoria, and now Victoria is seeing just how alike she and Chrissie can be. “I suppose I felt a little sorry for him, sometimes, but seeing him get jealous and fight with Robert about me was everything I wanted. I wanted to break Robert’s heart, and what better way to do that than to make his boyfriend break up with him?”

“And what about the baby?” Victoria asks. “You let him believe it was his.”

“Well it wouldn’t have done much to break them up if I’d just said it was Ross’,” Rebecca replied.

“And you didn’t care about how many people would be affected by that?” Rebecca opens her mouth to answer, but Victoria continues before she can. “Oh no wait, right, you don’t care about anyone but yourself.” And that, Rebecca decides not to say anything to. Victoria won’t believe her anyway. “I was on your side. I helped you get Robert on board to be there for the baby. Why would you even want that, if you hate him so much?”

“Because I could tell how much it hurt Aaron,” Rebecca says and shrugs. Better to put on the fully cold act right now than reveal her altered plan to Victoria. It had been okay to tell Ross, but she won’t tell Victoria. Or anyone else. “I didn’t _enjoy_ hurting him, as such, but I could tell that he couldn’t deal with it. I knew if I just kept pushing for Robert to be a part of the baby’s life, then Aaron would snap, like he did back when he beat up that guy, only this time I thought for sure that he’d dump Robert. And then Robert would know something like what I had felt when he used me.”

“I was on your side. I stood by you, I tried to get Robert more involved with the baby, and all the time you were just using me to get to him,” Victoria says. She looks so hurt, it makes Rebecca feel a little bad.

“Well, you didn’t make it very difficult,” Rebecca says. “You wanted a baby yourself so badly that you clung onto mine, like some sort of consolation prize.”

“I was _trying_ to be a mate, cause it didn’t actually seem like you had a lot!” Victoria protests. “And when you said it was Robert’s, I wanted to be more involved because I thought I was gonna be an auntie.”

“Whatever you say,” Rebecca says lightly. “I’m just saying that you didn’t make it very difficult for me to get to Robert through you.”

“You are such a cow,” Victoria says, as if the realization of this has just dawned on her. “You’re so cruel, you really didn’t care about who you hurt, as long as in the end, you hurt Robert.” Rebecca just shrugs. It’s the truth, really, except that she wouldn’t personally call herself cruel. “Well you lost. Because Cain and Ross sussed you out and got a DNA test, and now Robert knows what you’ve been up to. He won’t let you use him again, and him and Aaron are better than they’ve been in months.”

It hurts to hear that more than she’d expected to. Of course, with her reveal happening under the circumstances that it did, Rebecca knew that she probably wouldn’t get to break up Aaron and Robert, or break Robert’s heart in any way.

She’d hoped he’d be upset about losing the baby. But realistically, she knows that whatever Victoria had managed to push him to, he’d been reluctant.

He’s probably just relieved.

“You stay away from my brother, _and_ from me. And I’m sure the Dingles won’t want you anywhere near any of them either, so maybe you should just leave the village,” Victoria snaps.

“You don’t get to decide where I go. My family’s here,” Rebecca bites back.

“Whatever, just stay away from us.” And with that, Victoria storms back out.

Rebecca slams the door behind her. She’s not that upset about losing Victoria as a friend. She’s pretty sure Victoria was only her friend because of the baby, anyway, and the friendship never meant all that much to Rebecca emotionally. It mostly meant something in terms of the pull Victoria had with Robert. That doesn’t mean that Rebecca isn’t a little sad to have lost a friend, but she’d been prepared from the start to make enemies with her revenge plan. She hadn’t let herself grow too attached to any of the relationships she formed, because she knew that they’d vanish at some point.

Mostly, Rebecca is frustrated. Aaron is popular in the village yes, but Robert isn’t, and she’d hoped that people could understand her reasons for doing what she did.

It doesn’t look like that’s happening.

Although maybe it will. Maybe it’s just the people closest to Robert and Aaron, like Victoria, that won’t understand.

 

**

 

Robert and Aaron come by the next day.

Rebecca is shocked. She’s shocked to see them together. She’d have expected them to come one at a time. She’s shocked that they come now. When they didn’t come see her the day after her big reveal, she’d thought maybe they needed more time before they’d get their full-blown confrontation out of the way, but there they are. Two days after she revealed what she’s done, standing so close to each other they might as well be conjoined at the hip.

Rebecca kind of hates Chrissie and Lawrence for picking these days to always be gone for out-of-town business.

“I think we have a few things to talk about, don’t you?” Robert says, voice cold.

Rebecca doesn’t say anything. She just steps aside to let them in and closes the door.

She’d felt pretty pleased with herself after her big reveal in the pub. The looks of shock on everyone’s faces, Robert realizing he’d been well and truly played, all of it had felt great. And Chrissie smiling at her later that day, like she was proud of what Rebecca had done to Robert, had only made her feel even better.

But after yesterday, after Ross and Victoria, Rebecca doesn’t feel so great anymore.

She doesn’t regret what she’s done, not in the least. But she is now public enemy number one, and even if people understand that she wanted to punish Robert, no one seems to like how she discarded everyone else to do so. Lying about the paternity of her baby was maybe a step too far for some. Not caring about Aaron’s mental health, or their families, and who she hurt as she set about getting her revenge, hasn’t made her super popular, and she doesn’t _regret_ it, but she does feel a little _guilty_ , maybe. After all, Aaron never did anything to her, aside from stand up to her to protect his relationship.

Or maybe it’s not guilt, but she feels _bad_ , after having her every defense shot down by Victoria, and having Ross call her out on her feelings for Robert. She might think Robert deserved everything he got, but as Victoria said, she had been cruel to others to get her revenge, and like Ross said, she’d had other motivations than just that.

Robert’s face is hard when Rebecca turns to look at the two of them. Aaron looks like he could punch someone, or cry.

“I don’t even know where to start,” Robert says. His voice is as hard as his face. It’s lost the cold, detached tone from before and become passionately angry instead. “What you said you did – how could you do that to me?”

“I wanted to make _you_ feel how you made _me_ feel,” Rebecca says.

“Because he didn’t live up to your delusions?” Aaron bites out.

“I _always_ made it perfectly clear that I was with Aaron. The only time I didn’t was… _that_ night,” Robert says, looking down at the floor at the end. Aaron’s jaw twitches, but other than that, he doesn’t react to the mention of Robert’s night with Rebecca. Robert looks back up again. “And apparently the only reason we even got there was because of what _you_ were doing.”

“Is that ‘we’ as in me and you, or ‘we’ as in you and Aaron?” Rebecca asks.

“Well, both, I suppose,” Robert says loudly, throwing his hands in the air. “The only reason me and Aaron had that fight was because he was in prison, and he was in prison because we fought about _your_ presence in our lives, and that was all your plan, to come between us, to make us fight. And the only reason you and I slept together was because you saw an opportunity to take your little plan a step further and hurt Aaron even more!”

“What did I ever do to you?” Aaron asks.

“Nothing, really. I’m sorry I pushed you so far that you went to prison, but it was never about you. It was always about making Robert suffer,” Rebecca replies.

“And I didn’t matter? I was just a piece in your little game?” Aaron says. He has tears in his eyes now.

“Robert _hurt me_. I wanted to _hurt him_ ,” Rebecca says, for the umpteenth time, she feels like.

“What did I do that was so bad?” Robert asks. “I never hid my relationship or acted like I wanted you or –”

“Oh, but you did!” Rebecca interrupts. “You admitted it yourself, that day at the prison. Sure, you _said_ you were with Aaron, and you pushed me away the first few times I tried to kiss you –”

“ _First few times_?” Aaron echoes, disbelief clear in his voice and face.

“Well, I didn’t know how much Robert had changed!” Rebecca says defensively, loudly. “We had an affair for years behind Chrissie’s back. When he called me and asked me to come here, I assumed he’d be up for it again, like he always was. He set me straight on that immediately though, don’t worry.”

“Yeah, I did. So why did you think that I wanted you enough that I broke your heart, or whatever it was you said was your reason for doing all this?” Robert asks.

“Because yeah, you said you were with Aaron, and that you loved him, but you kept acting like you did when we were sleeping together,” Rebecca replies. “The tone of your voice, the look in your eyes, the way you’d touch me sometimes… it was all the same. Well, almost. And when I kissed you that night, and you kissed me back, you said that it wasn’t the right time. You didn’t mention Aaron, you just said it wasn’t the right time. You _flirted_ with me all night, and you’d been flirting with me before. Everything about the way you acted was the same as when we had an affair. You made me think that at the end of it, we’d have something again.”

“No I didn’t!” Robert protests. “Yeah, okay, I flirted a bit to make sure you didn’t side with your dad and Chrissie, so you wouldn’t lose them, but that was it. I told you I loved Aaron. You’re the one who thought there was more between us.

“Because you made me think there was!” Rebecca shouts. “I just told you! The way you acted wasn’t like you were spoken for, it was the opposite!”

“Well it wouldn’t have been so easy to play that strategy if you didn’t still have feelings for me like some pathetic teenager when we hadn’t even seen each other for years!” Robert shouts.

That stings. A lot.

Rebecca can’t quite stop the tears gathering in her eyes, but she fights to stop them from falling, and shrugs. She may as well get everything on the table, now. “You’re right. I _did_ still have feelings for you,” she says. “And I thought, with Chrissie out of the picture, maybe you and I could be the real thing. I thought maybe your thing with Aaron was just a phase, or just a little fun, because you got tired of following the rules.”

“I’m bisexual,” Robert grits out. “And what you just said is so offensive, I don’t even know where to start.”

“I didn’t know that, did I,” Rebecca says with another shrug. “I thought I actually had a chance, when you and Chrissie split and you then wanted me to come here. And you _used_ that against me, to make me do what you want.”

“Well it’s not like you hid that you had feelings for me,” Robert says.

“I didn’t expect you to throw it back in my face like that,” Rebecca bites. “So when you did, after we tried to break Lachlan out, I was _heartbroken_. I thought you wanted me, at least as much as you wanted Aaron. Only then I found out that you’d been playing me right from the start, and I was heartbroken. I tried to get my own back the next day, when I told everyone that we kissed, but _apparently_ , the two of you have such a great relationship that Aaron already knew and didn’t care, so I had to come up with something else.”

“You didn’t _have_ to do anything,” Robert says angrily.

“Yes, I did. Because I wanted you to feel how I felt,” Rebecca counters. “And maybe I didn’t get to break the two of you up like I planned to, but at least I got to watch you suffer, when you and Aaron were always fighting, and when he was in prison.”

“I went through _hell_ inside!” Aaron shouts. “And you were just _enjoying it_?”

“ _I_ didn’t make you beat up that guy,” Rebecca defends, but Aaron and Robert both look livid.

“But you did, didn’t you?” Aaron says. “You made sure me and Robert were always fighting, and that night, we had a _massive_ fight about you, just like you wanted. And I got angry, and I took it out on a guy who was being homophobic to one of my mates, but all of that only happened because _you made it_! I was going out of my mind over _looks_ and _gestures_ , and it was all part of your messed up little plan!”

He has tears running down his cheeks, and Robert reaches out to hold him, an arm wrapped around his back.

“I didn’t know you’d go that far,” Rebecca says. “I’m sorry about what you went through, but you can’t blame me for it.”

“Yes I can, and I will,” Aaron grits out.

“And so will I, because whether you planned that or not, it was because of you, and you _enjoyed_ having done that to us,” Robert says. “I don’t know why I _ever_ liked you. You’re even more poisonous than your sister.”

Rebecca just shrugs, like she doesn’t care. She’s gotten good at lying.

“I assume the baby was all part of it too?” Robert continues. “You pretended it was mine so that it would drive Aaron away, and I’d be heartbroken.”

“Something like that, yeah,” Rebecca replies, stroking her stomach.

“Well thank God Cain and Ross saw through you,” Robert says. “I never want anything to do with you again. If you ever come near us, I’ll ruin you. And you know I can do that.”

The look in Robert’s eyes is just slightly crazy, like it gets when he desperately wants to protect something. Rebecca isn’t entirely sure what Robert means when he says that he can ruin her, but she does know that he means it. That if he sets out to ruin her, he’ll find a way. She’s not really keen to challenge him again, so she just shrugs, as if it doesn’t matter to her whether she sees them again or not, and Robert gently steers Aaron towards the door.

“You know,” Robert says, stopping and turning back to look at Rebecca. “Not once, in all the time we’ve known each other, did I ever intend on having a real relationship with you.”

Rebecca blinks. “What?”

“I told Chrissie that the subject of me and you getting married instead of me and her came up, and it did. But only because _you_ brought it up, and I played along to keep you sweet,” Robert says. Rebecca feels a lump forming in her throat, her breathing getting harsher.

“You don’t mean that,” she says.

“Yes, I do. I was always going to pick Chrissie over you,” Robert says. “You and I had fun, but you were easy, and she was _exciting_. I _did_ care about her. I was always going to choose her. And now, I’m _always_ going to choose Aaron.”

And with that, he takes Aaron’s hand and the two of them walk out, walk to Robert’s car, get in, and drive away, together.

And Rebecca’s legs give out, and she crumbles on the floor, crying, alone.

 

**

 

As much as she’d like to just stay at home and sulk forever, Rebecca knows it’s not a feasible solution. If she intends to stay in the village, she has to face the villagers at some point.

And she does intend to stay. Her family is here, and so is the father of her baby. She has nowhere else to go, and even if she has the money to uproot and make a fresh start somewhere else, she wants to be near her family. She has a feeling she’ll need them, when the baby comes. Ross was right. She’s never really been the maternal type before, and even if she very much wants to be now, she’ll probably need some help figuring out how to do that.

So the day after Aaron and Robert’s visit, she braves going to the café. It’ll be a while yet before she braves the pub, what with it being run and overrun by Dingles, but the café could be safe ground.

People look at her when she walks in. Pete glares at her a little, probably not too pleased with the way she treated his brother. Nicola looks like it’s taking everything she has not to say something. A lot of others are looking at Rebecca like they can’t believe she’s dared to come here. Rebecca ignores all of them and walks up to the counter.

“Hello Bob,” she says, as confidently as she can.

“I’m surprised to see you here,” he says, not unkindly. “You’ve been the talk of the village for days.”

“Well, I couldn’t stay away forever. I do still live here,” Rebecca says.

“Very brave of you. You’re practically public enemy number one around here,” Bob says. “People aren’t too pleased with what you did.”

“Robert deserved taking down a peg or two,” Rebecca says coolly. She will not be told off by _Bob_.

“But did Aaron and Liv deserve what that did to them?” Bob asks gently.

Rebecca doesn’t really have a defense for that. That’s the problem now, that even if people agree that Robert deserves to be punished, for one thing or another, no one thinks Aaron deserved what Rebecca inadvertently put him through. “Do you want my business or not?” she asks instead.

“Always.” Bob smiles. “Just because you did something wrong doesn’t mean you don’t get to come here. If that’s how I operated my business, I’d have no customers.” He laughs, and Rebecca laughs a little too. “What’ll it be?”

Rebecca orders a cup of tea and a full English breakfast and settles down to eat in the corner.

No one bothers her, thankfully. People come and go all the time, and a lot of them send her looks, either surprised to see her or glaring at her, and she ignores them as much as she can. At one point Lisa Dingle comes in, and the look on her face makes Rebecca feel about an inch tall, it’s so scathing. Not even Cain’s smug glare makes her feel as bad as Lisa.

When Rebecca’s finished her food, Brenda comes over to clear away the plate.

“I’m surprised you’re brave enough to show your face here,” she says, but like Bob, she doesn’t sound like she hates her. “You should count yourself lucky that Robert and Aaron are at the counsellor’s until noon. If they saw you here –”

“Counsellor’s? What counsellor?” Rebecca asks. She can’t help herself.

“Well, after you told them about everything, they decided to get some couple’s counselling,” Brenda replies.

“Why?” Rebecca asks. Victoria had said they were closer than they’d been in months. And the way they’d acted when they came to see her was very much indicative of a strong couple. But maybe they’ve just been putting on a front? Maybe things aren’t going as well as they make it seem?

“After what you did, I think they want to make sure no one can come between them like that again,” Brenda says and walks away with the empty plate.

Rebecca leans back in her seat.

She’s not scheming anymore. It’s a little weird, to not take every action from Robert and Aaron and analyze it for something she can use against them. She can’t help but think about this one, though.

Couple’s counselling is usually to strengthen a relationship, but it’s also usually done by couples who are close to splitting up. Had she really gotten _that close_ to her end goal? That now they’re going to counselling to try to salvage their relationship? Or is it true that they’re stronger than ever, and they’re just going to counselling to make sure it can stay that way?

Her curiosity gets the better of her, so she stays in the village (away from the pub, and any Dingle she sees), until noon, when Robert and Aaron arrive back. She sees them head into the café and decides to follow them. It’s time for lunch, anyway.

“Hello boys,” she says.

Robert and Aaron turn around, and twin looks of anger and disgust cover their faces when they see her.

“I told you to stay away from us,” Robert says lowly.

“I heard you went to couple’s counselling,” Rebecca says, ignoring Robert. “Trouble in paradise?”

“Oh, you’d love that, wouldn’t you,” Robert scoffs and turns back to the counter.

“We’re fine now. But you did a number on our relationship, and we just want to make sure no one else ever thinks they can do the same,” Aaron says coldly. Robert has finished placing their orders, so he guides Aaron over to a table, completely ignoring Rebecca, and Aaron doesn’t look back at her either.

Rebecca decides that going home for lunch might be better.

She keeps going down to the village, to go to the café and the shop and to see Ross, and the more she shows her face, the more villagers like the Thomas’, the Spencers, and the Metcalfes stop staring at her and start treating her normally again. Nicola gets a good snipe in, one day, but other than that, the Kings also seem content to ignore her. The Bartons, the Sugdens, and the Dingles all continue to glare and snipe at her, but she’d expected that.

Chrissie and Lawrence also both say that they get their share of snide comments in the pub, and Rebecca is sorry to have put them in that position, but they both assure her that it’s alright. They’re both still on her side. They both think that Robert and Aaron deserved everything they got, so they don’t mind the villagers not being happy with them.

They hadn’t been that popular in the village anyway.

Rebecca doesn’t approach Robert and Aaron again. She’s not that stupid. But she sees them around, and true to their word, they _do_ look very happy. Happier than they’ve seemed since everything came out about Robert and Rebecca.

Her plan completely failed, it seems. She only got enjoyment out of it while she was still scheming.

Victoria lets her know, probably to rub it in her face, that their couple’s counselling is going well and that they’re only getting stronger every day, and Rebecca grits her teeth and bares it.

She’s kind of heartbroken, again. After all, she’d let herself love Robert again, after she found out she was pregnant. She’d altered her plans so that she might end up both getting revenge _and_ getting Robert, and now, that’ll never happen. Robert won’t go near her again, and that’s if he and Aaron ever break up, which it doesn’t seem like they will anytime soon. So yeah, she’s heartbroken. Again. And it’s down to Robert, again.

But this time, Rebecca can’t only blame Robert. She has to blame herself too.

 _She_ was the one who let herself love Robert again. _She_ was the one who wanted a family with him. Robert played no part in that.

This time, she has no real choice.

This time, she just has to let the heartbreak run its course, and then try to see if she can maybe, finally, after all this time, _actually_ get over Robert.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I have plans to write a sequel about Aaron and Robert's couple's counselling, so if you'd like to give me some input on that, I'll take all advice and suggestions on board. If you think I shouldn't write it at all, let me know. Also, feel free to let me know if you'd like me to attempt to fix other bits of canon, or fix in a different way, because I might be up for it. Writing this was both fun and kind of cathartic.
> 
> Feel free to talk to me on tumblr too! (tumblr.copperstown.com)


End file.
